54 Rural Youth in the Context of Fragility and Conflict
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Papers of the 2019 Rural Development Report Rural youth in the context of fragility and conflict by Ghassan Baliki Tilman Brück Neil T. N. Ferguson Wolfgang Stojetz IFAD 54 RESEARCH SERIES The IFAD Research Series has been initiated by the Strategy and Knowledge Department in order to bring together cutting-edge thinking and research on smallholder agriculture, rural development and related themes. As a global organization with an exclusive mandate to promote rural smallholder development, IFAD seeks to present diverse viewpoints from across the development arena in order to stimulate knowledge exchange, innovation, and commitment to investing in rural people. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). The designations employed and the presentation of material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of IFAD concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The designations “developed” and “developing” countries are intended for statistical convenience and do not necessarily express a judgement about the stage reached in the development process by a particular country or area. This publication or any part thereof may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes without prior permission from IFAD, provided that the publication or extract therefrom reproduced is attributed to IFAD and the title of this publication is stated in any publication and that a copy thereof is sent to IFAD. Authors: Ghassan Baliki, Tilman Brück (Team Leader), Neil T. N. Ferguson and Wolfgang Stojetz © IFAD 2019 All rights reserved ISBN 978-92-9072-971-6 Printed December 2019 Rural youth in the context of fragility and conflict by Ghassan Baliki Tilman Brück Neil T. N. Ferguson Wolfgang Stojetz IFAD This paper was originally commissioned as a background 54 paper for the 2019 Rural Development Report: Creating RESEARCH opportunities for rural youth. SERIES www.ifad.org/ruraldevelopmentreport Acknowledgements This background paper was prepared for the Rural Development Report 2019 “Creating Opportunities for Rural Youth”. Its publication in its original draft form is intended to stimulate broader discussion around the topics treated in the report itself. The views and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and should not be attributed to IFAD, its Member States or their representatives to its Executive Board. IFAD does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work. For further information, please contact [email protected]. IFAD would like to acknowledge the generous financial support provided by the Governments of Italy and Germany for the development of the background papers of the 2019 Rural Development Report. About the authors Ghassan Baliki is a senior researcher at ISDC and a Research Associate at the Development Economics and Food Security research group at Leibniz Institute of Vegetable and Ornamental Crops IGZ near Berlin. He obtained his PhD from Humboldt University of Berlin, where he studied violent conflict dynamics in Syria at the micro level. Ghassan’s research focuses on the interlinkages between violent conflict, fragility and food security, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). His methodological areas of expertise are experimental and quasi-experimental impact evaluations, quantitative statistical and spatial analysis, and micro-level data collection. Ghassan previously was a Marie Curie Fellow with TAMNEAC (Training and Mobility Network for the Economic Analysis of Conflict) at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) and he has worked as a consultant for the EU, the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ) and the World Bank. Tilman Brück is the founder and Director of ISDC. He is also Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and Team Leader – Development Economics and Food Security at IGZ near Berlin. Tilman is also the co-founder and codirector of the Households in Conflict Network (HiCN) and the principal investigator of the Life in Kyrgyzstan Study (LiK Study). His research interests focus on the economics of household behaviour and well-being in areas affected by violent conflict, fragility and humanitarian emergencies, including the measurement of violence and conflict in household surveys and the impact evaluation of programmes in conflict-affected areas. He has published over 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals (including Demography, Journal of Comparative Economics, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of the European Economic Association, Journal of Peace Research and World Development) and edited over a dozen books and special issues of journals on the economics of conflict and insecurity. Tilman has led, as a principal investigator, several impact evaluations in conflict-affected and fragile states. Tilman was previously Director of SIPRI, Professor of Development Economics at Humboldt University of Berlin, and Head of the Department of Development and Security at DIW Berlin. He has also worked as a consultant for the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the European Commission, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), GIZ, the International Labour Organization (ILO), Kreditanstalt fur Wiederaufbau (KfW), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Bank. Tilman studied economics at the University of Glasgow and the University of Oxford, and obtained his doctorate in economics from the University of Oxford. Neil Ferguson is a senior researcher at ISDC. He obtained his PhD in economics in July 2013 from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, focusing on theoretical and empirical analysis of the role of multiple aggressors in civil conflicts. His current research interests address a broad cross-section of theoretical and empirical conflict and development topics, including the role of micro-dynamics in conflict intensity, behavioural impacts of conflict involvement, and the relationship between conflict and economic behaviour. Neil has ongoing research projects focusing on conflicts and violence in Northern Ireland, Kenya, Mexico and the Middle East. Previously, Neil worked at DIW Berlin and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Wolfgang Stojetz is a senior researcher at ISDC and a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Economics at Humboldt University of Berlin. Previously, he was a pre-doctoral research fellow at Yale University and a research affiliate at DIW Berlin. Wolfgang’s primary research interests are the economic, social and institutional interactions of development and violent mass conflict. In his doctoral dissertation, he studied the causal impacts of wartime military service on long-term social behaviour. The analysis draws on 10 months of fieldwork conducted in central Angola and makes use of primary quantitative data at the household, individual and partner levels. Wolfgang studied physics, mathematics and economics at the University of Colorado (Boulder), the Instituto Superior Tecnico in Lisbon, Portugal, and the University of Regensburg, Germany, and in the Berlin Doctoral Program in Economics and Management Science (BDPEMS). He holds a PhD in economics from Humboldt University of Berlin, and a diploma in Physics from the University of Regensburg (equivalent to MSc). Wolfgang is an alumnus of the Fulbright Program, the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting and the Royal Economic Society (RES) Junior Researcher Symposium, and has received grants from the BDPEMS, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), German Excellence Initiative, German Physical Society (DPG), Humboldt University of Berlin, Portuguese Research Council (FCT) and United States Institute of Peace (USIP). He has also served as a short-term consultant to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), ILO, Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO), UNDP and World Bank. Table of contents 1. Introduction 1 1.1 Who are the rural youth? Data and background 3 1.2 Rural youth and conflict in the context of transformation 4 1.3 Conceptual background and approach 4 1.4 Scope and disclaimer 6 2. The interaction of conflict, violence, fragility and rural opportunity 6 3. The life stages approach 11 3.1 The prenatal stage 12 3.2 The early-life stage 13 3.3 The education stage 14 3.4 The transition to employment stage 15 3.5 The employment stage 15 3.6 The family formation stage 16 4. Cross-cutting themes 17 4.1 Agriculture 17 4.2 Migration 18 4.3 Community participation and social cohesion 19 4.4 Radicalization and young people as fighters 20 4.5 Gender-based and sexual violence 20 5. Analyses for pull-out boxes 21 5.1 Education 23 5.2 Employment 23 5.3 Idleness 23 6. DDR programming pull-out 24 7. Conclusions 25 References 28 Appendix 40 Abstract Despite accounting for only 7 per cent of the world’s population, rural youth account for more than 10 per cent of the world’s conflict-exposed population. In 2016, alone, over 350 million rural youth lived in conflict-affected countries. Despite conflict’s being defined as “development in reverse”, however, we find a general