To study international peace and conflict resolution, we end up studying a lot of conflicts. We talk easily about how conflict affects a nations infrastructure. What does this specifically mean?? A few of the books I have been reading have given me some ideas. It’s a cause of great suffering, and informal/ extralegal economies spring up to help people cope. Even these specifics though are hard for me to grasp, coming from a place where modern civil war is only conceivable as a competitive term for a football game.

(as of 1997)
Somalia has no banks. It has become a total cash economy.

Haiti became completely bankrupt. (Ironically, no one will invest money in a country with no money)

Haiti’s kids have been out of school for 3 years because teachers cannot be paid. (Similarly, post conflict Rwanda has changed the official language from French to English, but child headed households of Rwanda suffer as they grew up learning French and cannot afford to go back to school to learn the new official language.)

Somalia has no taxi or driver system. However, many would be taxi drivers have found work elsewhere, forming a plethora of untrained bodyguards with automatic weapons for hire.

Haiti also has an emerging profession, termed “body guide”, which refers to a person who will sell information regarding a newly found dead body to journalists. When your unemployment rate is close to 100 percent this seems somewhat less cutthroat?

Relocated refugees and internally displaced people (refugees within their own country: IDPs) place huge strain on tense post conflict armies and resources. In Rwanda, IDPs have been tearing down the gorilla forests to make money by building furniture. This leads to more violence. And lack of reconciliation and money in the country make for volatile soldiers. The siege of Kibeho in Rwanda was thus instigated, where soldiers killed and wounded thousands of refugees while forcibly moving them from their settlements.

In Angola, groups of amputee women affected by the prolific landmines create their own internationally extending informal economies selling produce. They have found ways outside the normal legal means to feed their children despite an unconcerned government.

Violent conflict affects us in so many ways that we never realize. I wish politicians and decision makers would start reading these books before they decide that war is the only solution.