Business and International Crimes
War Zones as Social Space
Fafo is involved in societies undergoing, or recovering from, wars and armed conflicts.
The Regional War zone
Globally, certain zones of conflict face seemingly chronic instability and insecurity. These zones currently include Central Africa and the Great Lakes Region, West Africa, the Middle East (e.g. Palestine/Israel) Afghanistan and the Ferghana Valley in Central Asia, and the Andean Region in Latin America. While the number of armed conflicts has dropped since the early 1990s, of those that continue 66 per cent were more than 5 years old in 1999 and 30 per cent were more than twenty years old. In addition, many conflicts which were suspended in the 1990s - not least in Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia - have not been resolved.
In these zones of chronic conflict, livelihoods are under severe stress and most people die from health and nutritional consequences of conflict, not from bullets or bombs. Economic conditions are harsh and poverty extensive. It is difficult to farm fields, hard to travel to markets, health clinics are often forced to close and it becomes impossible for children to go to school. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, credible estimates state that 2.5 million people died during a 32-month period beginning in August 1998 and ending in March 2001. The overwhelming majority of these deaths were related to disease and malnutrition, while a proportional smaller number were directly attributable to violence.
Fafo is now developing a series of research projects globally under the
heading " The Regional War Zone", with an objective to reach
better understanding of how wars and conflicts create altered social conditions
for people forced to live in zones of conflict, and how they cope with
these conditions. The rationale for this is to be able to provide better
analysis on how to respond to the humanitarian and social challenges created
by wars and armed conflicts.
Click here for a the background discussion paper "Life in zones of
conflict:
Understanding health and food-related coping strategies"
More information on this work will be presented on these pages at later
stages.
Measuring Insecurity
Peace Implementation Network Forum: Information Needs for Planning Post-Conflict Reconstruction
The Forum of practitioners was convened to discuss different methods of generating social data for planning aid in post-conflict transitions. The objective of the Forum was to discuss ways to inform on-going planning processes by exploring the options (methods, tools, etc.) used for generating social data.
Iraq Multiple Indicator Rapid Assessment - IMIRA
IMIRA is a rapid living conditions assessment of Iraq that will be carried out by the Central Statistical Office (CSO) of Iraq in Cooperation with Fafo The IMIRA survey will deliver basic data on living conditions in Iraq by June 2004. It will cover population, housing, infrastructure, health, nutrition, education, labour market and household economy. To reflect the specific post-war situation in Iraq, questions related to landmines, UXO, and other war-related health and security topics have been included. IMIRA is intended to cover all the 18 governorates in Iraq. A representative, two-stage probability sample of 22,000 households will be drawn.
Trafficked children and children working under conditions characterised
as worst form of child labour, such as child soldiers, prostitutes and
street children are not covered in standard household surveys. Fafo is
working on developing methodologies to approach these groups, both with
quantitative and qualitative methodology to provide data on their situation.