Pardee-CFLP-Remittances-TF-Report

onments “are more than twice as likely to be undernourished as those in otherdeveloping countries, more than three times as likely to be unable to send theirchildren to school, twice as likely to see their children die before age five, andmore than twice as likely to lack clean water” (The World Bank 2011, 5).The changing nature of violent conflict and its social and economic consequenceshas also created the need to reconceptualize research and policyapproaches to post-conflict settings. According to a broad definition, a post-conflictcountry is a country that is emerging from a severe conflict. In post-conflictsituations, open warfare has ended, but a potential for violence remains (Wallensteen2007). Post-conflict contexts are characterized by human loss, destructionof infrastructure and means of production, as well as adverse economic andpolitical conditions (Collier 2000). Attempts to precisely identify a post-conflictcondition in any given case, however, are faced with increasing challenges indetermining the beginning and end dates of the post-conflict period. Despitesigning formal ceasefire agreements, unrest may still fester and conflicts flareup, destabilizing the peace process. It is also increasingly difficult to determineat what point in time the consequences of the conflict would lose their disruptiveinfluence; under conditions like that, “it is impossible to say exactly when acountry returns to normalcy from its post-conflict state” (Nkurunziza 2008).The increasingly recurrent and ambiguous nature of violent conflicts is alsoreflected in recent research and policy approaches to conflict-affected states.The UCDP/PRIO 2 Armed Conflict Dataset, for example, lists multiple separaterecurrent incidents for many of the 50+ countries that have experienced violentconflict in the last 30 years. 3 UCDP emphasizes its focus on political determinantsand frameworks of the conflict as well as organized parties using violentmeans, over the previous emphasis on conflict as primarily a function of fatalities(Strand and Dahl 2010). The focus on diverse state and non-state actors andpolitical incompatibilities also highlights the ambiguities relating to the definitionof “post-conflict” and lays emphasis on the increasingly recurrent characterof violence in present-day societies.2 Uppsala Conflict Data Program and the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo, have produced a datasetof external and internal armed conflicts for the period of 1946–2008. Key variables of the dataset concern incompatibility,actors of the conflict, and its intensity.3 According to UCDP definition, conflict is defined as “a contested incompatibility that concerns governmentand/or territory where the use of armed force between two parties, of which at least one is the government of astate, results in at least 25 battle related deaths” (The UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset Codebook, p. 1).Remittance Flows to Post-Conflict States: Perspectives on Human Security and Development 9