Buying Peace: The Mirage of Demobilizing Rebels

Olivia D'Aoust, Olivier Sterck and Philip Verwimp

Working Papers ECARES from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles

Abstract: In 2009, hostilities were brought to an end in Burundi when the FNL rebel group laid downweapons. In exchange for peace, ex-rebels benefited from a disarmament, demobilizationand reintegration (DDR) program to finance their return to civilian life. A few years earlier,another rebel group (CNDD-FDD) had gone through the same program. In this paper, weassess the impact of this complex program from a theoretical and an empirical viewpoint.First, we develop an agricultural model in order to predict the impact of demobilization cashtransfers on beneficiary and non-beneficiary households. Then, we test the theoretical modelby using a household panel dataset collected in rural Burundi. We find that, in the shortrun, the cash payments received by ex-combatants had a positive direct impact on purchasesand investments of beneficiaries, as well as an indirect positive impact on non-beneficiaries.We also find that the direct and indirect impacts on purchases vanish in the long run. Theseresults suggest that reinsertion grants may favour the acceptation of ex-combatants in theirlocal communities in the short run, but are most likely not sufficient for peace to hold.More generally, it emphasizes the importance of considering spillovers in the evaluation ofdevelopment programs.

Keywords: civil conflict; Burundi; disarmament; demobilization and reintegration program; cash transfer; spillovers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 I32 I38 N47 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 59 p.
Date: 2013-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Buying Peace: The Mirage of Demobilizing Rebels (2013)
Working Paper: Buying Peace: The Mirage of Demobilizing Rebels (2013)
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