The links between conflict and work are mutually reinforcing. Work can help with peace building, and unemployment, when overlapping with other social discontent, can be destabilizing. When people are unemployed, they may be more susceptible to participation in violent activities. In extreme cases and in unstable environments this may boost recruitment by insurgents, thus increasing the risk of civil war. Unemployment and the discontent and grievances it stirs—as well as reduced opportunity cost of violence—may be considerable. Violent conflicts have many complex effects on work. Conflicts not only lead to suffering and death; they also destroy livelihoods. As a result of violence and looting, people lose property, land and businesses. They also find it difficult to work when they are displaced, especially to neighbouring regions or countries where natural and other resources are already scarce. This not only leads to immediate poverty, but also reduces the prospects for recovery —particularly if the conflict is exacerbated, for example, by the proliferation of small arms, cattle raiding and militia activities. When violent conflict severs major infrastructural arteries, destroys power plants and fuel facilities and starves industries of foreign exchange for imported inputs, work in manufacturing, manufacturing-related services, tourism and some agriculture can decline. Violent conflict can and often does unleash mechanisms of “primitive accumulation”: the use of extra-economic or noneconomic coercion to wrest assets from their owners or occupiers (for example, through forced displacement and wartime land accumulation) and to force people to join wage labour markets for their survival. The redistribution of work opportunities and of workers during conflict is not restricted to national boundaries. Regional conflict complexes, as they have been called, often generate complicated labour markets and frequently abusive labour relations and working conditions across borders, helping create displacement economies. Many refugee women during the Mozambican war ended up working as illegal—and cheap —workers on globally competitive agro-business farms in South Africa during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Ugandan rural labour markets contain
many people with Congolese or Rwandan conflict-related origins, and they may experience discrimination in hiring practices and treatment. The effect of conflicts on work varies across groups. For example, young people may have fewer opportunities for productive work, leaving them more vulnerable to recruitment by gangs, rebels or terrorist groups. Even after conflicts end, young people are the ex-combatants most likely to be out of work. Conflicts can also add to the workload for women. If men are absent due to fighting, women face even greater paid and unpaid work responsibilities at home. But women may also be actively involved in conflicts. In Sudan women and girls were on the front lines of the two north–south civil wars as both combatants and peace activists.27 Women are crucial in the work of peace making and conflict prevention, including peace talks, conflict mediation and all aspects of post-conflict resolution. This is widely recognized in the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, adopted in October 2000. The resolution also acknowledges the dramatic impact violent conflicts have on women and urges governments to increase the participation of women in peace and security efforts.28 Actions to implement the resolution have already been planned and implemented by some 25 countries, from Liberia to Norway, from Nepal to the Philippines.29 Even so, few women have been present in peace negotiations, amid 39 active conflicts over the past 10 years, and only a small proportion of peace treaties contains direct references to women (16 percent of 585 peace treaties).30 And a study of 31 major peace processes between 1992 and 2011 revealed that only 9 percent of the peace negotiators were women.31 Women’s participation in the peace process is not just a matter of morality or equality, but one of efficiency. If women are not part of the peace process globally, half the world’s potential for building peace is lost. Instrumental in resolving conflict in Liberia, 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee underscores the significant involvement of women in peace building in a special contribution (signed box).
Violent conflicts have many complex effects on work
Chapter 1 Work and human development—analytical links | 39