Warfare and girls’ education: The impact of conflict tactics on educational dropout

• In Event: Gender beyond the basics: Critical studies of gendered violence in education

Proposal

Armed conflict leaves terrible legacies, from raw physical destruction of houses to shattered lives and families. One important effect is that conflict erodes educational progress, which can be detrimental to children’s wellbeing. Few studies, however, have analyzed if and how specific conflict tactics influence the education of children living in those areas. Specifically, we examine in this study the effect of conflict tactics that are focused on harming children, such as child soldier recruitment and sexual violence against children. We presume that this relationship is driven by a fear mechanism, which produces a tendency of parents to keep children at risk of abuse. Moreover, we argue that some war tactics should disproportionally affect the likelihood that girls will drop out of school. To empirically examine these expectations, we combine DHS survey data from 35 countries in sub-Saharan Africa on educational attainment with conflict data, new data on sexual violence against children, child soldier recruitment in general, and girl recruitment, in particular. The results shows that children living in conflict areas where groups use sexual violence against children and recruit child soldiers are more likely dropout of primary school. The preliminary results do not indicate any robust differences between girls and boys This research has important implications for our understanding of the relationship between armed conflict and education as well as the need for careful programming to ensure safe education for girls, in particular.

Authors

• Gudrun Østby, PRIO

• Siri Rustad