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

这个项目研究武装团体在内战期间如何、何时以及为什么故意使平民流离失所。虽然强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强迫流离失所作为战争武器的用途。鉴于全世界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未曾见过的水平，这一点令人迫切关注。该项目使用从1945-2004年内战流离失所问题人权记录和报告中收集的新的定量和定性数据，以及通过在非洲进行实地研究收集的档案和访谈数据，调查战斗人员精心策划的不同类型的流离失所问题，这些战略背后的独特动机，以及这些流离失所者可能被利用的条件。找出驱使武装团体将平民赶出家园的因素，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实践者提供至关重要的见解。鉴于强迫移徙造成的广泛和有据可查的安全和人道主义后果，该项目对美国的国家安全具有影响。作为第一项系统研究战时人口流离失所战略的研究，这项研究有几个潜在的变革性方面。它将通过以下方式拓宽和深化关于强迫移徙、内战和政治暴力的文献：(A)揭开冲突导致流离失所的黑匣子，并表明它可以采取不同的形式并发挥不同的战略和战术功能；(B)收集、分析和传播关于内战中强迫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，这项研究将探讨冲突文献中长期存在的问题，强调武装行为者克服有关平民忠诚度和从属关系的有限信息的未探索方式，并提供一种可信的机制来解释不分青红皂白地对非战斗人员使用暴力的现象。最后，这项研究将有助于非致命性暴力的理论化，尽管冲突学者往往忽略了非致命性暴力，尽管它影响的人比杀人案多得多。这一裁决反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力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.