# **4 Internal Conflicts and Refugees**

A particularly serious aspect of internal conflicts is the human suffering they generate. This is not only those who are killed or injured in conflict but the large number of people who are forced to leave their homes. The issue of refugees has received particular attention in Western media in recent years as refugee flows from Northern Africa, the Middle East and Afghanistan are increasingly reaching Europe. These refugee streams are linked to a severe humanitarian crisis with considerable funding needs for international donors and heavy strains on host countries.<sup>21</sup> The current refugee crisis, however, is in no way unique. Civil war has always been closely linked to humanitarian crisis and refugee streams are one way to capture this.

In this section we provide a cross-country analysis aimed at investigating how the stock of refugees evolves when a civil conflict hits a country. In the analysis we will focus entirely on showing changes in the stock of refugees across time to illustrate the dimensions involved. We will base our later analysis on these population movements. We exploit country-level data gathered from several sources. Data about refugees is provided by the UNHCR Population Statistics Database. The database provides information about UNHCR’s populations of concern from the year 1951 up to 2014. This database lists seven categories: refugees, asylum-seekers, returned refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), returned IDPs, stateless persons and others of concern. For each group the database provides yearly information about their composition by location of residence and origin. We exploit only the data on “refugees”.<sup>22</sup> In particular, we are interested in the annual stock of refugees for each country of residence, i.e. how many people with refugees status have left their home country each year. We focus on these numbers as they appear to be the most comparable across time and countries. However, this is likely to capture only the tip of the iceberg in some cases. The number of IDPs is extremely high in some instances but cannot be captured with the same level of confidence as refugees generally.<sup>23</sup> Cross-country data about conflict is provided by the UCDP/PRIO. As for the index of country-level economic activity, we use again information provided by the Penn World Table and World Bank databases. As mentioned above, our aim is to explore the dynamics of refugees during conflicts. In other words, we attempt to answer several questions. Do people run away from their home country when a conflict breaks out? Does the seriousness of the conflict matter in this decision? In which phase of the conflict do they leave? When do refugees come back to their home country?

In order to answer these questions, we look at the impact of conflict incidence on

> 21We will return to these issues in the policy section.

> 22According to the UNHCR definition, this category includes “individuals recognized under the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees; its 1967 Protocol; the 1969 OAU Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa; those recognized in accordance with the UNHCR Statute; individuals granted complementary forms of protection; or those enjoying temporary protection; and people in a refugee-like situation”.

> 23The UNHCR Global Trends Report 2014 provides evidence that confirms this hypothesis. About 59.5 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide by the end of year 2014. Among them, 19.5 million were refugees and 38.2 million were IDPs.

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