Civil Wars and Displacement

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayşe Betül Çelik
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Peace Processes ◽  
Displaced People ◽  
Return Dynamics ◽  
Shed Light

The growing number of civil wars in the post-Cold War era has been accompanied by a rising number of forcibly displaced people, who either stay within the borders of their own countries, becoming internally displaced persons (IDPs), or cross borders to become refugees. Although many studies have been conducted on the reasons of conflict-induced displacement, various questions remain of interest for the scholars of international relations, especially questions pertaining but not limited to the (a) gendered aspects of conflict, displacement, and peace processes, (b) predicting possible future displacement zones, and (c) best political and social designs for returnee communities in post-civil war contexts. Most studies still focus on the negative consequences of forced migration, undermining how refugees and IDPs can also contribute to the cultural and political environment of the receiving societies. Considering that there is a huge variation in types of conflict, motivations for violence, and the resulting patterns of displacement within the category of civil war, more research on the actors forcing displacement, their intentions, and subsequent effects on return dynamics can benefit research in this field. Similarly, research on return and reconciliation needs to treat displacement and return as a continuum. Paying attention to conflict parties in civil war bears the potential for new areas of exploration whose outcomes can also shed light on policies for post-civil war construction and intergroup reconciliation.

A Spatial Model of Internal Displacement and Forced Migration

2020 ◽  
pp. 002200272095847
Author(s):  
Jon Echevarria-Coco ◽  
Javier Gardeazabal
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Model ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Real Data ◽  
Internal Displacement ◽  
Internally Displaced Persons ◽  
Geographical Proximity ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Country Size ◽  
The World ◽  
Displaced People

This article develops a spatial model of internal and external forced migration. We propose a model reminiscent of Hotelling’s spatial model in economics and Schelling’s model of segregation. Conflict is modeled as a shock that hits a country at certain location and generates displacement of people located near the shock’s location. Some displaced people cross a border, thus becoming refugees, while others remain as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). The model delivers predictions about how the fractions of a country’s population that become refugees and IDPs ought to be related with the intensity of the shock, country size, terrain ruggedness and the degree of geographical proximity of the country with respect to the rest of the world. The predictions of the model are then tested against real data using a panel of 161 countries covering the period 1995-2016. The empirical evidence is mostly in line with the predictions of the model.

Introduction: Dawn Chatty and Bill Finlayson

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawn Chatty
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Internal Displacement ◽  
World War ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Afghan Refugee ◽  
Northern Cyprus ◽  
History Of ◽  
Displaced People

Dispossession and displacement have always afflicted life in the modern history of the Middle East and North Africa. Waves of people have been displaced from their homeland as a result of conflicts and social illnesses. At the end of the nineteenth century, Circassian Muslims and Jewish groups were dispossessed of their homes and lands in Eurasia. This was followed by the displacement of the Armenians and Christian groups in the aftermath of the First World War. They were followed by Palestinians who fled from their homes in the struggle for control over Palestine after the Second World War. In recent times, almost 4 million Iraqis have left their country or have been internally displaced. And in the summer of 2006, Lebanese, Sudanese and Somali refugees fled to neighbouring countries in the hope of finding peace, security and sustainable livelihoods. With the increasing number of refugees, this book presents a discourse on displacement and dispossession. It examines the extent to which forced migration has come to define the feature of life in the Middle East and North Africa. It presents researches on the refugees, particularly on the internally displaced people of Iran and Afghanistan. The eleven chapters in this book deal with the themes of displacement, repatriation, identity in exile and refugee policy. They cover themes such as the future of the Turkish settlers in northern Cyprus; the Hazara migratory networks between Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and the Western countries; the internal displacement among Kurds in Iraq and Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem; the Afghan refugee youth as a ‘burnt generation’ on their post-conflict return; Sahrawi identity in refugee camps; and the expression of the ‘self’ in poetry for Iran refugees and oral history for women Iraqi refugees in Jordan.

3 Direct Military Assistance on Request During Civil Wars

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
De Wet Erika
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Organizational Practice ◽  
Military Assistance ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Current State ◽  
State Practice ◽  
The Right

This chapter examines whether the right to self-determination in international law prevents military intervention on the side of the recognized government during a civil war. Post-Cold War state and organizational practice does not convincingly support the claim that direct military assistance at the request of a recognized government is prohibited during a civil war, otherwise known as a ‘non-international armed conflict’ (NIAC). Attempts to explain current state practice by means of counter-terrorism and counter-intervention exceptions to a general prohibition of such assistance also is not grounded in state or organizational practice, nor are such exceptions viable in practice. Instead, state and organizational practice seems to confirm the right of recognized governments to request military assistance from third states, also during civil wars/NIACs, as long as they retain their recognized, de jure status. The potential lack of ‘representativeness’ in such a situation does not seem to limit the extent to which the de jure government can act on behalf of the state (and its people) in matters pertaining to the use of force.

Democracy and Displacement in Colombia's Civil War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abbey Steele
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Collective Violence ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Shared Identity ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
Combining Evidence ◽  
The World ◽  
Displaced People

Civilian displacement is a regular, massive feature of civil war violence. This book provides a new way to think about displacement, by connecting it to how armed groups target violence against civilians, and how civilians respond. Individuals escape selective violence, civilians relocate together to avoid indiscriminate violence, and groups experience political cleansing following collective violence. Political cleansing is the expulsion of civilians from their communities based on a shared identity or trait. While it is difficult to detect civilians’ loyalties, the book shows that elections can both facilitate and incentivize displacement by revealing civilians’ political preferences; and giving elites a stake in the electoral composition of a community, motivating them to ally with armed groups. The book traces how democratic reforms triggered both processes in Colombia, leading to a major intensification of the war and to one of the highest populations of internally displaced people in the world. Combining evidence collected from remote archives, interviews with ex-combatants and displaced people, and quantitative data from the government’s displacement registry during nearly two years of fieldwork, the book connects Colombia’s political development and the course of its civil war to displacement.

Humanitarianism, Displacement, and the Politics of Nothing in Postwar Georgia

Slavic Review ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Cullen Dunn
Keyword(s):  
Black Holes ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Humanitarian Aid ◽  
Republic Of Georgia ◽  
Alain Badiou ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Internally Displaced People ◽  
Displaced People ◽  
International Donors ◽  
The Republic

After the 2008 war with Russia, many internally displaced people (IDPs) in the Republic of Georgia complained that they had nothing, despite the fact that international donors gave more than $450 million in humanitarian aid. What was nothing? How was it related to forced migration? Why did humanitarianism continually focus the IDPs' attention on what they had lost rather than the help they had been given? In this article, I use the work of existentialist philosopher Alain Badiou to argue that humanitarianism creates four forms of absence: anti-artifacts, black holes, imaginary numbers, and absolute zero. These forms of nothingness force displaced people into having nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing, which in turn prevents them from reassembling the fragments of their previous lives into meaningful forms of existence in the present.

scholarly journals Asylum Migration, Borders, and Terrorism in a Structural Gravity Model

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 146-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Carril-Caccia ◽  
Jordi Paniagua ◽  
Francisco Requena
Keyword(s):  
Forced Migration ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Regional Heterogeneity ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Terror Attacks ◽  
Displaced People ◽  
Migration Flows ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Country Specific

In this article, we examine the impact of terrorist attacks on asylum-related migration flows. So far, the literature that examines the “push factors” such as terrorism that explain forced migration has omitted the fact that the vast majority of people forced to flee typically do so toward other locations within the country. The novel feature of our research is the estimation of a structural gravity equation that includes both international migration and internally displaced persons (IDP), a theoretically consistent framework that allows us to identify country-specific variables such as terror attacks. For that purpose, we use information on the number of asylum applications, the number of IDP, and the number of terrorist attacks in each country for a sample of 119 origin developing countries and 141 destination countries over 2009–2018. The empirical results reveal several interesting and policy-relevant traits. Firstly, forced migration abroad is still minimal compared to IDP, but globalization forces are pushing up the ratio. Secondly, terror violence has a positive and significant effect on asylum migration flows relative to the number of IDP. Thirdly, omitting internally displaced people biases downward the impact of terrorism on asylum applications. Fourthly, we observe regional heterogeneity in the effect of terrorism on asylum migration flows; in Latin America, terrorist attacks have a much larger impact on the number of asylum applications relative to IDP than in Asia or Africa.

Forced Migration and Political Violence

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerstin Fisk
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Case Study Research ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
International Terrorism ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Displaced Populations ◽  
Syrian Civil War ◽  
Analytical Tools

There has been renewed academic interest in the security impacts of forced migration since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011 generated more than 5 million refugees, most of whom fled to neighboring countries and to Europe. Researchers are, for instance, increasingly working to identify how the type, severity, and perpetrator of political violence affect patterns of displacement, such as whether forced migrants cross borders or remain in their home country. Though much of the discussion in the security studies context continues to center on forced migration flows as a conduit for civil war, international terrorism, and refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) as perpetrators, scholars also have begun to focus attention on the ways in which refugees and the internally displaced can become the targets of political violence in the receiving state. Following the path of earlier qualitative research recognizing that displaced populations rarely become militarized, studies of a more quantitative orientation are now working to isolate the conditions under which forced migration leads to varying forms of political violence. Another important and growing area of focus is on how resettlement of the displaced affects the dynamics of violence in the origin country, including the potential for conflict recurrence. Efforts to study security impacts of forced migration more systematically have increased alongside the availability of new data and more diverse analytical tools and methods. Still, many important dimensions of the forced migration–conflict connection remain to be explored, and innovative research as well as new data collection efforts are necessary. Integrating insights from other fields, including economics, psychology, and sociology, and returning to the task of theory-building based on case-study research offer a promising path forward.

scholarly journals IDP resettlement and collective targeting during civil wars

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (6) ◽  
pp. 810-824 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abbey Steele
Keyword(s):  
Panel Data ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Armed Group ◽  
Internally Displaced People ◽  
Displaced People ◽  
Policy Priority ◽  
Perverse Effect

Refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) are not always safe where they resettle in ethnic civil wars, in which civilians’ identities overlap with the ethnic profile of armed combatants. This article argues that IDPs are also vulnerable in non-ethnic civil wars, through two related mechanisms that indicate civilians’ loyalties: (1) where the displaced are from and when they left; and (2) resettlement patterns. The first can suggest loyalties when the displacement is associated with territorial conquest and expulsion of suspected sympathizers. In turn, the displaced would be considered disloyal by the armed group responsible for the expulsion, and could be subject to further violence where they resettle. The second mechanism relates to the first: if displaced civilians are considered disloyal, then resettling with other, similarly stigmatized civilians can improve their security by reducing the household’s risk of discovery. However, clustering together with other IDPs can have a perverse effect: even though living in an enclave may reduce a particular household’s likelihood of suffering violence, the group itself is endangered because it is more easily detected. Armed groups can collectively target IDPs who resettle in clusters, either for strategic or retributive reasons. Implications of the argument are tested with detailed subnational panel data on IDP arrivals and massacres in Colombia, and the analyses provide support for the argument. The findings indicate that collective targeting of IDPs occurs even in civil wars without an ethnic cleavage, following voluntary resettlement patterns, and reinforces IDP security as a policy priority.

Dynamics of internal resettlement during civil war

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 236-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laia Balcells
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Internal Displacement ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Unintended Effect ◽  
Municipal Level ◽  
Relevant Covariates

This article explores the dynamics of internal resettlement in times of civil war by using a novel dataset of all municipalities of Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), which includes information on the total number of internally displaced from other parts of Spain that sought refuge in Catalan localities during the civil war. The dataset, which also incorporates information on relevant covariates, is built with a combination of primary (i.e. archival) and secondary sources. The results of the multivariate analyses indicate that political identities have a significant impact on resettlement: people tend to relocate to places where they can find others who share their political and/or ethnic identity; we see this reflected in political and ethnic alignments at the municipal level. In addition, the article uncovers a relevant dynamic in the diffusion of violence at the local level: the arrival of internal refugees in a new locality may have the unintended effect of increasing levels of direct violence due to its role in disseminating credible news of atrocities committed by the other side. The implications of this study go beyond the Spanish case and make a contribution to unpacking dynamics of violence and internal displacement in civil wars. The article also sheds light on some of the mechanisms by which refugee flows can play a role in the diffusion of violence throughout a given country.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document