ABSTRACT
Civil war and organised collective violence is a complex phenomenon. Not only does it produce human tragedies on a colossal scale, but it creates humanitarian crises that are of concern to the international community, as well as contributing to global and regional insecurity. To economists, especially development economists, civil war is important as it is now recognised as a major cause of underdevelopment and the persistence of poverty (see Murshed, 2002a; Collier et al., 2003). The number of countries embroiled in a civil war seems to have waned after 1994 (Hegre, 2004). But the average duration of civil wars, standing at 16 years in 1999, does not seem to exhibit a significant downward trend (Fearon, 2004). The number of fatalities in civil war may be declining recently, but the numbers of refugees and internally displaced persons is rising (Human Security Report, 2005). For all of these reasons ending conflict or reducing its intensity must be a very high policy imperative within the development and international security agenda.
