Causes of Civil War: Micro Level Evidence from Côte d’Ivoire

A multiethnic country like Côte d’Ivoire, which was relatively stable until the late 1980s, has been mired in crisis in the last two decades and experienced large-scale violence. This paper undertakes a disaggregated analysis of the civil war at sub-national levels in Cote d’Ivoire for the period from 1998 to 2006 using: (1) nationally representative household survey data, and (2) the ACLED conflict database that contains information on the date and geographical location of conflicts. We use both the department and the sub-prefecture levels as units of analysis, and find robust evidence that ethnic diversity is significantly associated with conflicts. We also find strong empirical evidence that the share of Ivoirites population and the share of Muslim population is a significant determinant of civil war at the sub-prefecture level. Furthermore, more populous areas are at high risk of civil war, but the outcome is statistically significant only at the department level. However, we do not find significant evidence that income inequality and land inequality have determined the level of civil conflict. Overall the findings suggest ethnicity and religious identities are the significant determinants of civil war in Cote d’Ivoire. Read more

Armed Conflict and Children’s Health: Exploring New Directions: The Case of Kashmir

The exposure to violence in utero and early in life has adverse impacts on children's age-adjusted height (z-scores). Using the experience of the Kashmir insurgency, I find that children more affected by the insurgency are 0.9 to 1.4 standard deviations smaller compared with children less affected by the insurgency. The effect is stronger for children who were born during peaks in violence. A robust finding in the health literature is that shorter children perform worse in schools, in jobs, and are sicker throughout their life. Here, children already negatively affected by the insurgency in their height, are also more likely to be sick in the two weeks prior to the survey. SOURCE: Households in Conflict Network // Institute of Development Studies // University of Sussex Read more

Services, Return, and Security in Four Counties in Southern Sudan

BICC was commissioned to undertake a study on issues relating to Return and Reintegration (RR) of actors displaced by the fighting in Sudan and to provide action-oriented data on issues relating to RR as a basis for suggestions to improve the RR program in Southern Sudan.

Data from the study was collected by a mix of desk surveys and two weeks of intensive fieldwork in four counties in Southern Sudan: Yei River, West Juba, Maridi and Mundri. The field study was preceded by a four-day training course for enumerators, twenty four of whom participated in the survey in four teams. A preparatory day was also dedicated to presenting the study of nongovernmental organization (NGO) partners in Equatoria, and to incorporating their suggestions into the study questionnaires.Read more

China and South Sudan

China’s growing role in Africa has received substantial attention, not least in Sudan and South Sudan, where decades of conflict and instability have made it an especially contentious context. China’s traditional foreign policy has been tested while contradictions in its non-interference policy, military relations and economic engagement have been exposed. On the whole, Beijing has adopted pragmatic responses to the realities of a complex situation, especially with regards to the Republic of South Sudan’s independence from Sudan in July 2011. Aside from the Chinese Government, there are many other Chinese actors who are involved in South Sudan, including a variety of state-owned banks, corporations and private companies. Read more

The Nuba of Sudan: From Ethnic War to Insurgent Civil Conflict

Following the partition of Sudan in July 2011, the breakdown of the CPA process on transitional governance has led the Nuba Mountain Region to a state of crisis, stemming from fragmented tribes with ethno-political allegiances to President al-Bashir’s National Congress Party (NCP), or the Nuba-backed SPLM-N. Furthermore, GoS initiated aerial bombardments combined with sweeping ground attacks by SAF forces against the SPLM-N and supporters has created a regional humanitarian crisis, with more than 150,000 IDPs fleeing to South Sudan and Ethiopia. In the face of an emerging alliance between Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF) opposition and insurgent groups with the intention of regime change, the al-Bashir regime has denied the entry of aid organizations and international observers to the region, and has continued military incursions and attacks on South Sudan and autonomous regions in its plight to control disputed oil-rich territory. These are clear violations of UNSC resolution 2046 and undermine AU-mediated negotiations pushing a 3-month timeline for negotiations between the GoS and the GoSS to resolve disputed border areas, install a Safe Demilitarized Border Zone with an agreement on border demarcation, oil revenue sharing, and a resolution to the administration of the Abyei territory. Policy recommendations that prioritize an end to violence in South Kordofan, Blue Nile and Abyei regions, oil transit fee settlements, and alleviating the humanitarian crisis are addressed tos the internatonal community and the Government of Canada. These recommendations also address the obstructive and pre-emptive tactics by the al-Bashir regime to avoid a recurrent civil war fueled by the insurgency of the SRF amidst an emerging political crisis in Khartoum. Read more

http://www.humansecuritygateway.com/documents/IPI_PeaceandSecurityThre atsintehSahelSaharaRegion.pdf

The crisis in the Sahel will not end unless new responses depart from the traditional “business-as-usual” approach. This was the key insight offered in a high-level roundtable on the Sahel held at IPI on September 7, 2012. Six key points emerged from the meeting:
1. The emergence of Islamists serves as a cover for illicit trafficking, facilitating the transfer of a considerable amount of foreign currency. As such, a strict security approach should be complemented by principles of governance and the rule of law.
2. A negotiated settlement in Mali appears unlikely at present. The government institutions and political elite are too weak and divided to convincingly incentivize rebels to negotiate. An alternative to the Economic Community of West African States mediation process may be needed, one that would involves key players such as Algeria.
3. The difficult prospects for negotiation make military escalation increasingly probable. Since many of the groups operating in northern Mali have a tenuous tactical alliance, and given historic friction between sedentary and pastoral communities, any military action is fraught with risks.
4. Long-term reforms are needed to address legitimate grievances of the Tuareg and other populations, restructure a weak national army, and establish an effective government in Bamako. Regional platforms for capacity building could strengthen weak local structures.
5. The acute security crisis in Mali is eclipsing the longer-term humanitarian, developmental, and demographic time bomb in the region. Advancing the “resilience” agenda will be critical to meeting this challenge and staving off disaster.
6. To ensure coordination of activities, the expected appointment of a UN special envoy for the Sahel should be balanced by regional ownership of the proposed “field-led” integrated strategy to be presented to the Security Council on September 17th. Read more

Addressing the 'Conflict Minerals' Crisis in the Great Lakes Region

The year 2011 heralded the convergence of various initiatives seeking to curtail the financing of conflict in the Great Lakes region through the illegal exploitation of minerals. This policy brief provides a framework for responding to the unintended consequences of existing initiatives in the region. It details the areas of immediate impact of these initiatives, their overall impact on the trends of insecurity in the region and ways of addressing the issues in the short to medium term. Read more

Estimating the Causal Effects of War on Education in Côte D’Ivoire

: In this paper we estimate the causal effects of civil war on years of education in the context of a school-going age cohort who are exposed to armed conflict in Cote d’Ivoire. Using year and department of birth to identify an individual’s exposure to war, the difference-in-difference outcomes indicate that the average years of education for a school-going age cohort is .94 years fewer compared to an older cohort in war-affected regions. To minimize the potential bias in the estimated outcome, we further use a set of victimization indicators to identify the true effect of war. The propensity score matching estimates do not alter the main findings. In addition, the outcomes of double-robust models minimize the specification errors in the model. Moreover, we find the outcomes are robust across alternative matching methods, estimation by using subsamples and other education outcome variables. Overall, the findings across different models suggest a drop in average years of education by a range of .2 to .9 fewer years. Read more

Somalia Human Development Report 2012

: The future of Somalia and the well-being of its people rests significantly on empowering its large youth population. This is the first report of its kind on this war-torn Horn of Africa country in more than a decade. The new report – which is based on surveys conducted in more than 3,000 households in south central Somalia, Puntland and Somaliland - reveals that although the majority of Somali youth believe they have a right to be educated (82%) and a right to decent work (71%), they feel disempowered by multiple structural barriers built into the family, institutions, local government and society at–large. This lack of viable education and employment opportunities – in addition to clan and cultural prejudices – has created a high level of frustration and discontentment among young people. Therefore, radical shifts in policies and attitudes are needed in order to empower and place them at the core of the development agenda. Read more

Does Uranium Mining Increase Civil Conflict Risk? Evidence from a Spatiotemporal Analysis of Africa from 1945 to 2010

We employ a two‐tier spatiotemporal analysis to investigate whether uranium operations cause armed conflict in Africa. The macrolevel analysis suggests that – compared to the baseline conflict risk – uranium ventures increase the risk of intrastate conflict by 10 percent. However, we find ethnic exclusion to be a much better predictor of armed conflict than uranium. The microlevel analysis reveals that uranium‐spurred conflicts are spatiotemporally feasible in four countries: the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Namibia, Niger and South Africa. We find strong evidence in the case of Niger, and partial evidence in the case of the DRC. Namibia and South Africa do not yield substantial evidence of uranium‐ induced conflicts. We conclude that uranium may theoretically be a conflictinducing resource, but to the present day empirical evidence has been sparse as most countries are still in the exploration phase. Considering that the coming years will see 25 African countries transition from uranium explorers into producers, we strongly suggest that our analysis be revisited in the coming years. Read more