Philip Verwimp

Health and Civil War in Rural Burundi

We combine household survey data with event data on the timing and location of armed conflicts to examine the impact of Burundi’s civil war on children’s health status. The identification strategy exploits exogenous variation in the war’s timing across provinces and the exposure of children’s birth cohorts to the fighting. After controlling for province of residence, birth cohort, individual and household characteristics, and province-specific time trends, we find an additional month of war exposure decreases children’s height for age z-scores by 0.047 standard deviations compared to nonexposed children. The effect is robust to specifications exploiting alternative sources of exogenous variation.

Civil War, Crop Failure, and Child Stunting in Rwanda

We combine Rwandan household survey data with event data on the timing and location of localized crop failure and armed conflict to examine the impact of these distinct shocks on children’s health status. The identification strategy exploits exogenous variation in the shocks’ geographic extent and the exposure of children’s birth cohorts to the shock. We find that in poor and nonpoor households, boys and girls born during the conflict in regions experiencing fighting are negatively affected, with height-for-age z-scores 1.05 standard deviations lower. Conversely, only girls are negatively affected by crop failure, with these girls exhibiting 0.86 standard deviations lower height-for-age z-scores, and the impact is worse for girls in poor households. Results are robust to using alternative shock exposure measures, different geographic boundary definitions for the affected regions, and household-level production and rainfall shocks as alternative measures of crop failure.

Poverty Dynamics, Violent Conflict, and Convergence in Rwanda

Civil war and genocide in the 1990-2000 period in Rwanda - a small, landlocked, densely populated country in Central Africa - have had differential economic impacts on the countrys provinces. The reasons for this are the death toll of the genocide, the location of battles, the waves of migration and the local resurgence of war. As a result, the labour/land and labour/capital ratios at the provincial level changed considerably during that period. Using two cross-sections, we find empirical evidence for convergence between provinces following the conflict shocks: previously richer provinces in the east and in the north of the country experienced lower, even negative, economic growth compared to the poorer western and southern provinces. This has in turn affected significantly the dynamics of household poverty in Rwanda in the same period. Using a small but unique panel of households surveyed before and after the conflict period, we find that households whose house was destroyed or who lost land ran a higher risk of falling into poverty. This was particularly the case for households who were land-rich before the genocide. We do not find this for the loss of household labour. In the latter case the effect depends on the violent or non-violent character of the loss.

The political economy of coffee, dictatorship, and genocide

The paper presents a political economy analysis of the Habyarimana regime in Rwanda. The analysis shows how, through the producer price of coffee, the dictator buys political loyalty from the peasant population, and how, in periods of economic growth, the dictator increases his level of personal consumption as well as power over the population. The analysis of Habyarimana’s policy decisions leads to the conclusion that he was a totalitarian type of dictator. When, at the end of the 1980s, the international price of coffee fell dramatically, the regime switched to severe forms of repression to maintain its hold onto power. Genocide emerges as an outcome of Wintrobe’s loyaltyrepression model, while foreign aid sustained the dictator’s hold onto power. D 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Testing the Double-Genocide Thesis for Central and Southern Rwanda

Results of a research project with household-level data on the demographic impact of genocide and civil war in Rwanda are reported. The survey includes demographic and criminological data on 352 peasant households that were part of a large household survey project before the genocide. The absolute number of Hutu killed in the sample is half of the number of Tutsi killed. The statistical and econometric results show that the killing pattern among Hutu and Tutsi was different; Tutsi members of the same household were often killed on the same day and in the same place. The effect of the arrival of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) at the survey sites on the survival chances of Hutu and Tutsi is estimated.

Winners and Losers Among a Refugee-Hosting Population

The impact of a sudden, mass influx of forced migrants on the hosting economy is understudied and not well understood. Using a household panel data set for the Kagera region in Tanzania, we test the impact of the mass refugee presence on the welfare of the local population. Our identification strategy exploits variations in the timing of arrival as well as the spatial distribution of Rwandese and Burundi refugees. We find a positive and aggregate effect, but households are affected differently depending on their main initial occupation.

Death and Survival during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda

This paper reports a quantitative study of the genocide in the prefecture of Kibuye in western Rwanda in 1994. It uses a database produced from a house-to-house survey of victims by the organization of genocide survivors, Ibuka. For a total of 59,050 victims of the genocide, data were collected on age, sex, occupation, commune of residence before the genocide, and place and date of death. An analysis conducted for one commune (Mabanza), showed that the chance of surviving the genocide was higher in those sectors of the commune where the Tutsi population did not congregate at a football stadium in Kibuye. Those who went to a mountainous area and defended themselves were almost the only Tutsi still alive in the prefecture after the month of April 1994. Other determinants of survival included age, sex, and occupation. The number of deaths each day while the killing lasted is estimated for the whole of the prefecture.

Machetes and Firearms: The Organization of Massacres in Rwanda

This article is a quantitative study of the use of machetes and firearms during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Kibuye Prefecture. The machete is an agricultural tool owned by most Rwandan households and is believed to have been the prime instrument of killing during the genocide. The article addresses the question to what extent individual characteristics of victims (gender, age, occupation) and aspects of the Rwandan genocide (location of atrocities, point in time during the genocide) determined the perpetrators’ use of modern rather than traditional weapons to kill individual victims. An original database developed by the organization of the survivors of the genocide (IBUKA) is used. The data were collected from 1996 to 1999 and contain information on the deaths of 59,050 victims. Logistical regression analysis is performed to explain the use of either a traditional weapon or a firearm to kill the victims. The analysis shows that the probability of being killed with a firearm depended on the location where the victim was killed (more particularly, on whether or not the victim was killed in a large-scale massacre); on the commune of residence and the age of the victim; on the number of days after 6 April the victim was killed; and on interaction effects between the latter two variables and the gender of the victim. The importance of individual characteristics, location of atrocities and timing for the use of different kinds of weapons adds to our understanding of the organized nature of the Rwandan genocide.

Development ideology, the peasantry and genocide: Rwanda represented in Habyarimana's speeches

Some societies have, in the past, opposed manual and intellectual labor with the latter giving in general more prestige to its performer. Such a concept not only seems outdated but also unacceptable because it is not realistic. In fact, manual labor, especially agricultural labor is the basis of our economy. We want to repeat that agriculture will stay the essential base of our economic system for the years to come.

Business under fire: entrepreneurship and violent conflict in developing countries

In this article, we provide an introduction to the Special Issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution devoted to the impact of violent conflict on entrepreneurship in developing countries. First we note that there is insufficient attention in the literature on the impact of violent conflict on the firm or entrepreneur level. Then, after we define entrepreneurship and violent conflict, we provide a summary of the existing literature and give an overview of the contributions in this Special Issue. We conclude by noting policy implications and areas for further research.