Conflict-affected Country Research Articles

Crop yield prediction from remotely sensed vegetation indices and primary productivity in arid and semi-arid lands

Global demands for biomass and arable lands are expected to double in the next 35 years. Scarcity of water resources in arid and semi-arid areas poses a serious threat to their agricultural productivity and hence their food security. In this study, we examine whether crop yields can be predicted from remotely sensed vegetation indices and remotely sensed estimates of primary productivity. Spatial relationships between remotely sensed enhanced vegetation index (EVI), net photosynthesis (PNet), and gross and net primary production (GPP and NPP, respectively) in irrigated semi-arid and arid agro-ecosystems since the beginning of the century are analysed. The conflict-affected country of Syria is selected as the case study. Relationships between EVI and crop yield are investigated in an effort to enhance food production estimates in affected areas outside governmental jurisdictions. Estimates of NPP derived from reported irrigated agriculture crop data in a semi-arid and an arid zone are compared to remotely sensed NPP in a geospatial environment. Results show that winter crop yields are correlated with spring GPP in semi-arid zones of the study area (R2 = 0.85). Summer crop yield can be predicted from either cumulative summer EVI (R2 = 0.77) or PNet in most zones. Where fully irrigated fields are surrounded by hyper-arid landscape, summer PNet was negative in all instances and EVI was inversely correlated with yield. NPP from crops was much higher (290 gC m−2 year−1) in those regions than MOD17 NPP (70 gC m–2), where 1.0 g of carbon is equivalent to 2.2 g of oven-dry organic matter (= 45% carbon by weight). The gap was less in semi-arid zones (2–39% difference). Overall crop-derived NPP for the period 2000–2013 was 322 versus 300 gC m–2 for that remotely sensed within the cropped zones of the political units. The results of this study are crucial to derive accurate estimates of irrigated agriculture productivity and to study the effect of the latter on net ecosystem carbon storage.

Fostering International Collaboration for Food Security and Sustainable Development:A Personal Perspective of M. S. Swaminathan's Vision, Impact and Legacy for Humanity

Arguably, no living person has done more than M. S. Swaminathan to improve the lives of the poor and the marginalized. His monumental contributions to India's Green Revolution are documented elsewhere. In this paper, I focus sharply on two little-chronicled bodies of his work: (1) the IRRI Cambodia programme which guided and supported that conflictaffected country to achieve rice self-sufficiency and exporter status; and (2) the United Nations Hunger Task Force which fundamentally changed global thinking about hunger and food security by going beyond productivity improvement to include nutrition, social safety nets, natural resource management, and an enabling policy environment. Both cases illustrate the power of international collaboration and a commitment to inclusive and sustainable development. The Sustainable Development Goals will carry these principles forward for humanity as an enduring legacy of Swaminathan's vision and life achievement.

Violent conflict and opiate use in low and middle-income countries: A systematic review

BackgroundViolent conflicts disproportionately affect populations in low and middle-income countries, and exposure to conflict is a known risk factor for mental disorders and substance use, including use of illicit opiates. Opiate use can be particularly problematic in resource-limited settings because few treatment options are available and dependence can impede economic development. In this systematic review, we explore the relationship between violent conflict and opiate use in conflict-affected populations in low and middle-income countries. MethodsWe searched MEDLINE, PsychINFO, SCOPUS, PILOTS, and select grey literature databases using a defined list of key terms related to conflict and opiate use, screened the results for relevant and methodologically rigorous studies, and conducted a forward search of the bibliographies of selected results to identify additional studies. ResultsWe screened 707 articles, selecting 6 articles for inclusion: 4 quantitative studies and 2 qualitative studies that examined populations in 9 different countries. All study participants were adults (aged 15–65) living in or displaced from a conflict-affected country. Data sources included death records, hospital records, and interviews with refugees, internally displaced persons, and others affected by conflict. Overall, we found a positive, but ambiguous, association between violent conflict and opiate use, with five of six studies suggesting that opiate use increases with violent conflict. Five key factors mediate the conceptual relationship between opiate use and violent conflict: (1) pre-conflict opiate presence, (2) mental disorders, (3) lack of economic opportunity, (4) changes in social norms or structure, and (5) changes in drug availability. ConclusionsThe strength and direction of the association between opiate use and violent conflict and the proposed mediating factors may differ between contexts, necessitating country and population-specific research and interventions. Prevalence of opiate use prior to the start of conflict was common to all populations in which conflict induced a change in opiate use, suggesting that interventions to reduce opiate use and future research should focus on such populations. Population-based, longitudinal studies that use systematic measures of exposure to conflict and opiate use are needed to further explore this association and its mediating factors.

China and the Insecurity of Development in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

This article analyses China's contemporary engagement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as an example of Chinese involvement in a resource-rich, conflict-affected country. Following a large ‘minerals for infrastructure’ agreement signed in 2008, China's activities in the DRC are often presented as an example of a departure from Western-led liberal peacebuilding and development, by providing ‘corrupt’ Congolese national elites with new sources of unchecked rents; or it is viewed as a positive alternative to Western approaches, by focusing on win–win development and reconstruction. Both these views are flawed. Rather than offering a marked alternative to a Western ‘liberal’ peacebuilding project, this article argues that Chinese interests have increasingly coincided with evolving Western interests in support of stabilization and market-driven economic activities. This, however, does not offer a clear pathway to security and development in the DRC. On the contrary, both Chinese and Western involvement in the DRC provide possibilities for continued insecurity, rather than any fundamental break from previous patterns and structures of politics.

Controlled Trial of Psychotherapy for Congolese Survivors of Sexual Violence

BackgroundSurvivors of sexual violence have high rates of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Although treatment for symptoms related to sexual violence has been shown to be effective in high-income countries, evidence is lacking in low-income, conflict-affected countries.MethodsIn this trial in the Democratic Republic of Congo, we randomly assigned 16 villages to provide cognitive processing therapy (1 individual session and 11 group sessions) or individual support to female sexual-violence survivors with high levels of PTSD symptoms and combined depression and anxiety symptoms. One village was excluded owing to concern about the competency of the psychosocial assistant, resulting in 7 villages that provided therapy (157 women) and 8 villages that provided individual support (248 women). Assessments of combined depression and anxiety symptoms (average score on the Hopkins Symptom Checklist [range, 0 to 3, with higher scores indicating worse symptoms]), PTSD symptoms (average score on the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire [range, 0 to 3, with higher scores indicating worse symptoms]), and functional impairment (average score across 20 tasks [range, 0 to 4, with higher scores indicating greater impairment]) were performed at baseline, at the end of treatment, and 6 months after treatment ended.ResultsA total of 65% of participants in the therapy group and 52% of participants in the individual-support group completed all three assessments. Mean scores for combined depression and anxiety improved in the individual-support group (2.2 at baseline, 1.7 at the end of treatment, and 1.5 at 6 months after treatment), but improvements were significantly greater in the therapy group (2.0 at baseline, 0.8 at the end of treatment, and 0.7 at 6 months after treatment) (P<0.001 for all comparisons). Similar patterns were observed for PTSD and functional impairment. At 6 months after treatment, 9% of participants in the therapy group and 42% of participants in the individual-support group met criteria for probable depression or anxiety (P<0.001), with similar results for PTSD.ConclusionsIn this study of sexual-violence survivors in a low-income, conflict-affected country, group psychotherapy reduced PTSD symptoms and combined depression and anxiety symptoms and improved functioning. (Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development Victims of Torture Fund and the World Bank; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT01385163.)

Knights in Fragile Armor: The Rise of the “G7+”

Globally, 1-5 billion people live in countries affected by violent conflict. International aid to fragile and conflict-affected states accounts for 30 percent of global official development assistance (ODA) flows. However, no low-income fragile or conflict-affected country has yet to achieve a single Millennium Development Goal (MDG). For the first time, a group of these countries have joined together to discuss their shared development challenges and advocate for better international policies to address their needs. Calling themselves the g7+, this group represents an important new voice in the debate over aid effectiveness and it carries high expectations. This article describes the rise of the g7+ and attempts to answer the question on everyone's mind: Can it deliver? Recent years have witnessed a new criticism of the international aid architecture and its shortcomings in addressing the challenges posed by state fragility. Attention has shifted from hard targets in terms of percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) spent on official development assistance, and even the MDG targets, to the overall effectiveness of international development efforts. Critics have pointed to persistent shortcomings in the way that international assistance is delivered, particularly in problems of will and attention, lack of engagement with national stakeholders, aversion to risk, inflexible and cumbersome financing mechanisms, opaque decisionmaking processes, lack of country ownership, and a distressing lack of coherence and coordination among international actors. The potential for donor assistance to have the unintended effect of undermining, rather than bolstering, state capacity and legitimacy is now widely recognized. International actors have been faulted for applying cookie-cutter approaches to complex problems in vastly diverse environments, even as thinking on the challenges posed by conflict and fragility has evolved. In the past several years, there have been a number of milestones in seeking a structured international response to the failures of development assistance to meet challenges of fragility. Building on the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness- in 2007 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries endorsed a set of Principles for Good International Engagement in Fragile States and Situations (the Fragile States Principles) to guide aid to fragile states. However, these were top-down reform efforts: despite the good thinking that underpinned the Fragile States Principles, they were created by donors, for donors. Much like the Washington Consensus, which governed development policy in the 1980s, the early discourse on aid effectiveness largely consisted of outsiders diagnosing the problem, prescribing the solution, and assuming responsibility for carrying out the treatment. This started to change at the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, held in Accra, Ghana, in 2008, in which developing countries played a more active role in the preparations, and civil society groups across the developed and developing world were widely consulted. On the fragile-states front, perhaps the most significant development to come out of Accra was the establishment of the International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding. [1] The Dialogue brings donor and recipient countries together to devise a realistic set of peacebuilding and statebuilding objectives to address the root causes of conflict and fragility. Its participants include OECD donors; nontraditional donors (such as Brazil and China); international and regional organizations (including the UN, the World Bank, the African Union, and the African Development Bank); representatives of civil society; and, most importantly, representatives of conflict-affected and fragile states. First proposed at a preparatory meeting in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, in July 2008, the Dialogue was endorsed in Accra in September 2008 and formally launched at the end of that year. …

Measuring human rights violations in a conflict-affected country: results from a nationwide cluster survey in Central African Republic.

BackgroundMeasuring human rights violations is particularly challenging during or after armed conflict. A recent nationwide survey in the Central African Republic produced estimates of rates of grave violations against children and adults affected by armed conflict, using an approach known as the "Neighborhood Method".MethodsIn June and July, 2009, a random household survey was conducted based on population estimates from the 2003 national census. Clusters were assigned systematically proportional to population size. Respondents in randomly selected households were interviewed regarding incidents of killing, intentional injury, recruitment into armed groups, abduction, sexual abuse and rape between January 1, 2008 and the date of interview, occurring in their homes' and those of their three closest neighbors.ResultsSixty of the selected 69 clusters were surveyed. In total, 599 women were interviewed about events in 2,370 households representing 13,669 persons. Estimates of annual rates of each violation occurring per 1000 people in each of two strata are provided for children between the ages of five and 17, adults 18 years of age and older and the entire population five years and older, along with a combined and weighted national rate. The national rates for children age five to 17 were estimated to be 0.98/1000/year (95% CI: 0.18 - 1.78) for recruitment, 2.56/1000/year (95% CI: 1.50 - 3.62) for abduction, 1.13/1000/year (95% CI: 0.33 - 1.93) for intentional injury, 10.72/1000 girls/year (95% CI: 7.40 - 14.04) for rape, and 4.80/1000 girls/year (95% CI: 2.61 - 6.00) for sexual abuse. No reports of any violation against a person under the age of five were recorded and there were no reports of rape or sexual abuse of males. No children were reported to have been killed during the recall period. Rape and abduction were the most frequently reported events.ConclusionsThe population-based figures greatly augment existing information on human rights violations in CAR, and represent a step forward in quantifying the protection needs of Central Africans. Government, donors, and international organizations should make use of this data to better inform advocacy, prevention, and response programs, to assist in fundraising, and to develop surveillance activities to monitor child protection concerns.