The kidnapping of more than 200 teenage school girls by Nigerian Islamic extremists has shocked and sickened the world. Yet this appalling act is but a glimpse into a hidden epidemic that is having a devastating impact on the world’s poorest people.

As with all epidemics, there are recognisable symptoms.

If you’ve visited the Philippines, India or any number of countries in the developing world recently, you will most likely have noticed armed guards at shops you’ve visited or hotels where you’ve stayed. In vast numbers, the rich are buying protection for themselves. In India alone in 2010 there were 5.5 million employed in the private security industry. That’s approximately four times the size of India’s entire police force. In Guatemala, private security guards outnumber police 7 to 1.

This unprecedented rise in private security is a logical consequence of systemic failure. The rich are buying protection because the public justice systems – the police, courts and laws – aren’t working. As a result, in the developing world, violence is an everyday threat. To get the protection they need, the rich are circumventing the system and buying their own safety.

But what of the poor? What do you do when you can’t buy protection?

I first witnessed the reality of this everyday violence against the poor eight years ago in India, when I began working with International Justice Mission on cases of modern day slavery. At that time I met men, women and children who suffered the brutal reality of everyday violence.  Women like Mariamma, who was forced by her “owner” to work long days at a brick kiln and often gang raped at the day’s end. In India, if you hold someone in slavery you are more likely to be struck by lightning than ever be sent to prison.

When public justice systems don’t work, those billions that cannot buy their own protection are left vulnerable to violent exploitation – abuse, slavery and trafficking. For them, violence is a constant threat. It’s as much a part of poverty as hunger, disease and malnutrition. The ugly truth is that, according to a 2008 UN report, four billion people live outside the protection of the law.

World Bank data suggest that, globally, women and girls ages 15 to 44 are at greater risk of being killed or disabled by gender-based violence than by cancer, traffic accidents, malaria and war combined — with poor women and girls absorbing the vast majority of the abuse.  Appallingly, for many girls in the developing world, school is the most common place for sexual violence to occur.

This violence is epidemic. Yet it has remained, for the large part, on the margins of the development agenda. Though great and worthy development work has been done over many decades, though trillions of dollars of aid have been provided to poverty alleviation efforts, little has been invested to better criminal justice systems so that they protect the poor from violence.

Ending poverty requires ending violence. For education, health and opportunity to flourish, communities must be safe. This requires the provision of basic law enforcement.

Having worked as both a corporate and criminal lawyer in Australia, I know that some terrible crimes are committed here. But we have a justice system that, while not perfect, works to protect us.

Our country is located in a region where two thirds of the world’s poorest people live and they simply do not have the same protection we enjoy. These are our neighbours, neighbours who daily live in fear of violence, neighbours Jesus has clearly called us to love.

Considering this leads us to questions we must ask. How does God feel about the sufferings of a woman like Mariamma and the nearly 30 million slaves like her? Does he still rescue? Was exodus merely a one off?

Psalm 10 reminds us that these questions – ancient and urgent – are answered by the unchanging action of our Saviour and Defender:

Arise, Lord! Lift up your hand, O God.
Do not forget the helpless.
¹³ Why does the wicked man revile God?
Why does he say to himself,
“He won’t call me to account”?
¹⁴ But you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted;
you consider their grief and take it in hand.
The victims commit themselves to you;
you are the helper of the fatherless.

The Bible calls us to follow Jesus into his work of doing justice, loving our neighbours as ourselves. What is his plan? How is he to bring rescue and justice? How is he to rebuild public justice systems so that they will protect the poor? God’s plan is simple: it’s us. God is doing justice today and he is calling us to join him in his work.

Everyday violence is a profound issue for many countries close to Australia in Asia and the Pacific. It is also a profound challenge to the church in these countries and in Australia.

Mining magnate Andrew Forrest is now leading a high profile crusade to tackle such slavery and exploitation. He has sought to link new developments in countries such as Pakistan to tough new laws outlawing child labour.

But it’s not just billionaires that can make a difference. Many of us in Australia find ourselves in a position of relative wealth and influence.  We are resourceful, with passion, unique relationships, with education and skill.  As we bring what God has placed in our hands to the work of justice we will see justice come and, vitally, we will encounter God in a way, perhaps, we have never before.

When public justice systems are made to protect the poor – and slave owners, traffickers and other criminals can no longer act with impunity – millions of vulnerable children, women and men will never be abused.

It’s time to build this priority of protection for the poor from violence into the way we pray, the way we give, the way we employ our voice and our resources. We need to build a movement of Australians seeking justice for the oppressed; Australians who will answer Jesus’ call to follow him into doing justice, to love our neighbours – in Nigeria, in Chennai, in Cebu – wherever the poor are subject to violence.

Amber Hawkes is the Chief Executive of International Justice Mission Australia, a non-profit human rights organisation that operates in countries all over the world to rescue victims of individual human rights abuse.

Image: Thomas Leuthard via Flickr