Education and conflict recovery : the case of Timor Leste

The Timor Leste secession conflict lasted for 25 years. Its last wave of violence in 1999, following the withdrawal of Indonesian troops, generated massive displacement and destruction with widespread consequences for the economic and social development of the country. This paper analyzes the impact of the conflict on the level and access to education of boys and girls in Timor Leste. The authors examine the short-term impact of the 1999 violence on school attendance and grade deficit rates in 2001, and the longer-term impact of the conflict on primary school completion of cohorts of children observed in 2007. They compare the educational impact of the 1999 wave of violence with the impact of other periods of high-intensity violence during the 25 years of Indonesian occupation. The short-term effects of the conflict are mixed. In the longer term, the analysis finds a strong negative impact of the conflict on primary school completion among boys of school age exposed to peaks of violence during the 25-year long conflict. The effect is stronger for boys attending the last three grades of primary school. This result shows a substantial loss of human capital among young males in Timor Leste since the early 1970s, resulting from household investment trade-offs between education and economic survival.Adolescent Health,Youth and Governance,Education For All,Primary Education,Post Conflict Reconstruction

War and Stature: Growing Up During the Nigerian Civil War

The Nigerian civil war of 1967-70 was precipitated by secession of the Igbo-dominated south-eastern region to create the state of Biafra. It was the first civil war in Africa, the predecessor of many. We investigate the legacies of this war four decades later. Using variation across ethnicity and cohort, we identify significant long run impacts on human health capital. Individuals exposed to the war at all ages between birth and adolescence exhibit reduced adult stature and these impacts are largest in adolescence. Adult stature is portentous of reduced life expectancy and lower earnings.war, height, early life, human capital investments, Nigeria.

War and Stature: Growing Up During the Nigerian Civil War

The Nigerian civil war of 1967-70 was precipitated by secession of the Igbo-dominated south-eastern region to create the state of Biafra. It was the first civil war in Africa, the predecessor of many. We investigate the legacies of this war four decades later. Using variation across ethnicity and cohort, we identify significant long run impacts on human health capital. Individuals exposed to the war at all ages between birth and adolescence exhibit reduced adult stature and these impacts are largest in adolescence. Adult stature is portentous of reduced life expectancy and lower earnings.human capital investments, early life, height, war, Nigeria

Short- and Long-Term Impact of Violence on Education: The Case of Timor Leste

This paper analyzes the impact of the wave of violence that occurred in Timor Leste in 1999 on education outcomes. We examine the short-term impact of the violence on school attendance in 2001 and its longer-term impact on primary school completion of the same cohorts of children observed again in 2007. We compare the educational impact of the 1999 violence with the impact of other periods of high-intensity violence during the 25 years of Indonesian occupation. The short-term effects of the conflict are mixed. In the longer term, we find evidence of a substantial loss of human capital among boys in Timor Leste who were exposed to peaks of violence during the 25-year long conflict. The evidence suggests that this result may be due to household trade offs between education and economic welfare

Does War Empower Women? Evidence from Timor Leste

Conflicts may change the material conditions and the incentives individuals face through death, displacement and other consequences of violence. Being a victim of a war can also profoundly change individual beliefs, values and preferences (Bellows and Miguel 2009). Several counts have linked violent conflicts – including the two world wars – to changes in the roles of women, as well as social norms and beliefs towards gender roles within societies. The aim of this paper is to investigate the medium- and long-term consequences of a long-lasting conflict – the Timor Leste conflict – on various dimensions of women’s empowerment.UK Department for International Developmen

Education and conflict recovery : the case of Timor Leste

The Timor Leste secession conflict lasted for 25 years. Its last wave of violence in 1999, following the withdrawal of Indonesian troops, generated massive displacement and destruction with widespread consequences for the economic and social development of the country. This paper analyses the impact of the conflict on the level and access to education of boys and girls in Timor Leste. We examine the short-term impact of the 1999 violence on school attendance and grade deficit rates in 2001, and the longer-term impact of the conflict on primary school completion of cohorts of children observed in 2007. We compare also the educational impact of the 1999 wave of violence with the impact of other periods of highintensity violence during the 25 years of Indonesian occupation. The short-term effects of the conflict are mixed. In the longer term, we find a strong negative impact of the conflict on primary school completion among boys of school age exposed to peaks of violence during the 25-year long conflict. The effect is stronger for boys attending the last three grades of primary school. This result shows a substantial loss of human capital among young males in Timor Leste since the early 1970s, resulting from household investment trade-offs between education and economic survival. Keywords: conflict; education; children; gender

Processing Nouns and Verbs in the Left Frontal Cortex: A Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study

Neuropsychological and neurophysiological studies suggest that the production of verbs in speech depends on cortical regions in the left frontal lobe. However, the precise topography of these regions, and their functional roles in verb production, remains matters of debate. In an earlier study with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), we showed that stimulation to the left anterior midfrontal gyrus disrupted verb production, but not noun production, in a task that required subjects to perform simple morphological alternations. This result raises a number of questions: for example, is the effect of stimulation focal and specific to that brain region? Is the behavioral effect limited to rule-based, regular transformations, or can it be generalized over the grammatical category? In the present study, we used rTMS to suppress the excitability of distinct parts of the left prefrontal cortex to assess their role in producing regular and irregular verbs compared to nouns. We compared rTMS to sham stimulation and to stimulation of homologous areas in the right hemisphere. Response latencies increased for verbs, but were unaffected for nouns, following stimulation to the left anterior midfrontal gyrus. No significant interference specific for verbs resulted after stimulation to two other areas in the left frontal lobe, the posterior midfrontal gyrus and Broca's area. These results therefore reinforce the idea that the left anterior midfrontal cortex is critical for processing verbs. Moreover, none of the regions stimulated was preferentially engaged in the production of regular or irregular inflection, raising questions about the role of the frontal lobes in processing inflectional morphology.Psycholog

War and Stature: Growing Up During the Nigerian Civil War

The Nigerian civil war of 1967-70 was precipitated by secession of the Igbo-dominated south-eastern region to create the state of Biafra. It was the first civil war in Africa, the predecessor of many. We investigate the legacies of this war four decades later. Using variation across ethnicity and cohort, we identify significant long run impacts on human health capital. Individuals exposed to the war at all ages between birth and adolescence exhibit reduced adult stature and these impacts are largest in adolescence. Adult stature is portentous of reduced life expectancy and lower earnings

Marginalisation éducative dans les zones affectées par les conflits: Apprendre des études réalisées au Tanganyika et en Ituri, République démocratique du Congo

This Working Paper analyses how violent conflict can enhance or reduce pre-existing forms of marginalisation and second, how new forms of marginalisation emerge as a result of violent conflict. To do so, we focus on the province of Tanganyika in the DRC, where the so-called ‘Twa-Bantu’ violent conflict has been disrupting the education sector since 2012, and secondarily on the province of Ituri, which has been affected by repeated armed conflicts since the 1990s. We use a mixed methods approach, combining quantitative data collection methods and several months of qualitative fieldwork. The study shows that the political marginalisation of ethno-territorial groups is key in understanding marginalisation from education in contexts of protracted conflict. Our results show that the Twa minority of Tanganyika has not only been more exposed to violence during the Twa-Bantu conflict, but also that exposure to violence has more severe effects on the Twa in terms of educational outcomes. We analyse key mechanisms, in particular spatial segregation, and the social segregation of schools along ethnic/identity lines. We also analyse the interaction between ethno-cultural marginalisation and economic, social and gender-related marginalisation.Ce document de travail regroupe, avec un autre document de travail, l'essentiel des résultats issus du projet de recherche REALISE. Le projet de recherche REALISE fait partie du programme éducatif REALISE, financé par le Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) du Royaume-Uni et mis en œuvre par Save the Children, en partenariat avec World Vision. Le volet recherche est dirigé par l'Institute of Development Studies, en partenariat avec Marakuja Kivu Research, une association de recherche à but non lucratif basée à Goma, en RDC. Ce document de travail analyse d'abord comment les conflits violents peuvent renforcer ou réduire les formes préexistantes de marginalisation puis dans quelle mesure l'émergence de nouvelles formes de marginalisation résulte d'un conflit violent. Pour ce faire, nous nous concentrons sur la province du Tanganyika en RDC, où le conflit violent dit " Twa-Bantou " entraine des perturbations dans le domaine de l'éducation depuis 2012, et secondairement sur la province de l'Ituri, qui a été affectée par des conflits armés répétés depuis les années 1990. Nous utilisons une approche de méthodes mixtes, combinant des méthodes de collecte de données quantitatives et plusieurs mois de travail de terrain qualitatif. L'étude montre que la marginalisation politique des groupes ethno-territoriaux est un point clé pour comprendre la marginalisation éducative dans les contextes de conflits prolongés. Premièrement, parce que la marginalisation éducative est à la fois le résultat et le moteur de la marginalisation historique des groupes ethno-territoriaux et identitaires. Deuxièmement, parce que certains groupes peuvent être plus gravement touchés par les conflits violents. Nos résultats montrent que la minorité Twa du Tanganyika a non seulement été plus exposée à la violence pendant le conflit Twa-Bantou, mais aussi que l'exposition à la violence a des effets plus graves sur les Twa en termes de résultats scolaires. Nous analysons les mécanismes clés, en particulier la ségrégation spatiale et la ségrégation sociale des écoles selon des critères ethniques/identitaires. Nous analysons également l'interaction entre la marginalisation ethnoculturelle et la marginalisation économique, sociale et liée au genre.Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Offic

Clash of Civilizations: Impact of Culture on Militarized Interstate Dispute

Abstract Huntington (1993a, 1993b, 1998, 2000) argued that the fundamental source of con ‡ict in the post-Cold War world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic, but the great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of con ‡ict will be cultural and religious; as such, the primary axis of con‡ict in the future will be along civilizational lines. To that end, in addition to confronting several of Huntington's hypotheses we scrutinize the impact of culture on militarized interstate disputes and test whether countries that belong to di¤erent civilizations tend to be more involved in con ‡ict than countries that belong to the same civilization. We show that over the period of 1816-2001 civilizational dissimilarity in a dyad increases the probability of con ‡ict calculated at the means of the variables by up to 62.8 percentage points. More strikingly, even after controlling for geographic, political, military and economic factors, being part of di¤erent civilizations in the post-Cold War period brings about 71.2 percentage points higher con ‡ict probability than belonging to the same civilization while it reduces the probability of con ‡ict by 25.7 percentage points during the Cold War. JEL Classi…cation: D74, N40, N70, Z10