causes of death. The Danish Epidemiology Science Centre (1999) found severe malnutrition and high mortality in a survey of 422 refugee children in Guinea‐Bissau. They report higher malnutrition and higher mortality for children living in a non‐camp setting, compared to children living in a camp. The Goma epidemiology group (1995) found high prevalence of child mortality as well as acute malnutrition among children in refugee camps in Eastern Zaire, especially in female headed households. The magnitude of the difference between ‘normal’ mortality in the country under study, in the absence of conflict and the mortality in a refugee camp, depends on several parameters: the health infrastructure in the country as well as in the camp, the food available to camp and non‐camp residents, the frequency of visits by nurses or doctors, the intensity of the conflict (e.g. attacks on camps), and so on. Thus, the results are highly dependent on the context. For example, Singh et al (2005) do not find a difference in under 5 mortality among refugee versus non‐refugee households in western Uganda and South Sudan, whereas Verwimp and Van Bavel (2005) find higher child mortality and fertility among Rwanda refugees in Congo versus Rwandan women who did not became a refugee. When general living conditions in one’s residence or home area are worse compared to a camp environment, e.g. because health services are available in the latter, mortality may also be lower in the camp.

The strong presence of children in Africa’s refugee population implies that we should also look at the potential long‐term effects of forced displacement on survivors. Given the composition of the refugee population, such long‐term effects will be more important in Africa compared to elsewhere. Few studies have followed children exposed to forced displacement over a long time to directly infer the long‐term effects of forced displacement, in particular on health, education and labor market participation. Most studies of the long term effects of conflict use an indicator of exposure to violent conflict, but few of them have forced displacement as one of the indicators. There is however a very well established literature (see Currie and Vogl, 2013 for an overview) on the long‐term consequences of deprivation in early childhood which can be applied to the situation of refugees. If young children between the ages of 0 to 3 years old are exposed to malnutrition, disease, stress and violence during episodes of forced displacement, then, this literature shows that this deprivation will have negative long‐term effects.The literature is particularly large for Sub‐Saharan Africa, with solid evidence from countries as diverse as Burundi (Bundervoet et al. 2009), Cote d’Ivoire (Minoiu and Shemyakina 2012), Eritrea (Akresh et al. 2012b), Nigeria (Akresh et al. 2012a), Rwanda (Akresh et al. 2011), Uganda (Blattman and Annan (2010) and Zimbabwe (Alderman et al. 2006).

In effect, forced displacement is one of the channels through which violent conflict exercises its impact on the civil population. Verwimp and Van Bavel (2013) demonstrate that forced displacement reduces the probability to finish primary schooling in Burundi. These authors find that the frequency of forced displacement and the length of stay in a displacement camp matter for school completion. Being uprooted from one’s village because of ongoing or imminent violence proves to be disruptive for one’s school career to the extent that it decreases the probability to complete primary schooling, in particular in the event of several disruptions, when it happens several times. The magnitude of the effect of the length of stay in a displacement camp is smaller than the occurrence of disruption, but remains statistically significantly different from zero. The coefficient of the interaction between gender and forced displacement is positive and statistically significant, meaning that displacement reduces the 15