Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Coercive Use of Population Displacement in Civil Conflict

本项目研究武装团体在内战期间如何、何时以及为何故意使平民流离失所。虽然被迫流离失所已成为现代冲突的一个日益严重的特征，但很少有人试图系统地分析它作为一种战争武器的用途。鉴于世界各地因暴力和迫害而流离失所的人数最近激增至第二次世界大战以来从未见过的水平，这一点令人迫切关切。​确定促使武装团体将平民连根拔起的因素，将为希望预测和管理流离失所以及更广泛地预防、缓解和解决武装冲突的从业人员提供重要见解。鉴于强迫移徙造成的广泛和有充分证据证明的安全和人道主义后果，这个项目对美国的国家安全有影响。作为第一个系统地研究战时人口迁移策略的研究，这项研究有几个潜在的变革方面。它将通过以下方式拓宽和深化关于被迫迁移、内战和政治暴力的文献：(a)打开冲突导致的流离失所的黑箱，并表明它可以采取不同的形式，服务于不同的战略和战术功能，以及(b)收集、分析和传播关于内战中强制流离失所的原始数据，包括有史以来第一个跨国数据集。此外，本研究将通过强调武装行为者如何克服关于平民忠诚和从属关系的有限信息的未探索方式，并通过提供一种合理的机制来解释对非战斗人员滥用暴力的原因，来回答冲突文献中存在的长期问题。最后，这项研究将有助于非致命暴力的理论化，尽管冲突学者倾向于忽视非致命暴力，但它影响的人远比凶杀多。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project examines how, when, and why armed groups intentionally displace civilians during civil wars. While forced displacement has become an increasingly massive feature of modern conflicts, there have been few attempts to systematically analyze its use as a weapon of war. This is of urgent concern given that the number of people displaced by violence and persecution worldwide recently surged to levels not seen since World War II. This project uses new quantitative and qualitative data collected from human rights records and reports on displacement in civil wars from 1945-2004, in addition to archival and interview data gathered through field research in Africa, to investigate different types of displacement orchestrated by combatants, the distinct motivations underlying these strategies, and the conditions under which they are likely to be employed. Identifying the factors that drive armed groups to uproot civilians will offer crucial insights for practitioners hoping to anticipate and manage displacement, and to prevent, mitigate, and resolve armed conflicts more broadly. In light of the widespread and well-documented security and humanitarian consequences of forced migration, this project has implications for the national security of the United States. As the first study to systematically examine population displacement strategies in wartime, there are several potentially transformative aspects of this research. It will broaden and deepen the literatures on forced migration, civil war, and political violence by (a) unpacking the black box of conflict induced displacement and showing that it can take different forms and serve different strategic and tactical functions, and (b) collecting, analyzing, and disseminating original data on coercive displacement in civil wars, including a first-ever cross-national data set. In addition, this study will speak to enduring questions in the conflict literature by highlighting unexplored ways in which armed actors overcome limited information about civilians' loyalties and affiliations, and by offering a plausible mechanism for explaining the indiscriminate use of violence against noncombatants. Finally, this research will contribute to theorizing non-lethal violence, which conflict scholars have tended to neglect even though it affects far more people than homicides.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.