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The Impact of Violent Conflicts on Households: What Do We Know and What Should We Know about War Widows?

2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 37; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13600810903108321

1469-9966

Tilman Brück, Kati Schindler,

Income, Poverty, and Inequality

Abstract This paper analyses how mass violent conflict and the legacy of conflict affect households in developing countries. It does so by pointing out how violent conflict impairs a household's core functions, its boundaries, its choice of coping strategies and its well-being. The paper contributes to the literature on the economics of conflict, reconstruction and vulnerability in three ways. First, it addresses explicitly the level of analysis in the context of conflict by contrasting strengths and weaknesses of a unitary approach to the household and extending it to intra-household and group issues. Second, it identifies important research gaps in this field. Third, it highlights the economic situation of war widows in conflict-affected countries and discusses a case study of widows of the Rwandan genocide. Notes Financial support from the United States Institute of Peace is gratefully acknowledged. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Unites States Institute of Peace or of any other institution. The authors thank Christine Binzel, Stathis Kalyvas, Andreas Wimmer, the participants of the Second Annual HiCN Workshop in Antwerp in January 2007, of the UNU-WIDER Conference on Fragile States–Fragile Groups in Helsinki in June 2007 and of the DSA Conference in Brighton in September 2007 as well as two anonymous referees for their helpful comments. The paper benefited from discussions with Patricia Justino and Philip Verwimp. Ethnographic research in Rwanda was carried out under permission MINISTR/001/2007 with a grant from DAAD. Kati Schindler is grateful to AVEGA AGAHOZO and CARE Rwanda for their support during fieldwork. 1 For a literature survey on the evolution of the household concept within the disciplines of social anthropology, sociology and demography, see Netting et al. (Citation1984) and Keilman et al. (Citation1988). 2 Some authors have defined a minimum death toll in order to determine the scale of conflict, e.g. more than 1000 violent death per year (Stewart & FitzGerald, Citation2001, p. 3) or more than 25 battle-related deaths per year (Strand et al., Citation2002, p. 2). 3 See Justino (Citation2009) for a detailed review of the microeconomic literature on conflict. 4 An exception is the ancient ritual of sati in some regions of India, where widows commit suicide by entering their husband's funeral pyre (Weinberger-Thomas, Citation1999). 5 See Brück & Vothknecht (Citation2007) for a review. 6 The empirical case study draws on qualitative fieldwork conducted by the second author in Rwanda between March and May 2007. Following the approach proposed by Girtler (Citation2001), about 30 narrative interviews with rural households were conducted. About half of the respondents were widows. Four regions—Gikongoro, Butare, Byumba and Rwamagana—were chosen to capture different local conditions in terms of intensity of the genocide, geography and climate, and proximity to urban centres. Topics discussed with most interviewees included the person's life history, access to land, agricultural production and income-earning strategies, time allocation, social networks and well-being. Additionally, group discussions were conducted with associations and particularly with members of AVEGA AGAHOZO, the largest widows' organization in Rwanda. Given the limited duration of fieldwork, the qualitative data are considered to be indicative of general trends. 7 Gacaca courts build on a Rwandese tradition of community courts with elected community members acting as judges. They were introduced by the country to deal with the large number of suspects accused of committing atrocities during the 1994 genocide (e.g. Runyange, Citation2003). 8 Although earlier outbreaks of violence also widowed Rwandese women, widows of the 1994 genocide often perceive themselves to be a distinct group because of the magnitude of the massacres and suffering experienced by many of them. The empirical case study therefore considers genocide widows as a special case of war widows. 9 The government-promoted imidugu villagization schemes aim at providing housing for genocide victims and refugees (and eventually settling the whole rural population in imidugudus), thereby mitigating the pressing land scarcity (Bigagaza et al., Citation2002; Hilhorst & van Leeuwen, Citation1999).