# **6.2 Education**

A perhaps surprising result is that even in the presence of local violence shocks, many children still manage to go to school. A few previous studies have documented similar no-effect relationships between local conflict intensity and education outcomes, such as the study by Pivovarova and Swee (2015) using panel data from Nepal. Yet, our finding contrasts with the majority of earlier studies that documented negative impacts of violence exposure on educational outcomes, including in North-east Nigeria (Bertoni et al., 2018). These differences might have to do with the fact that we study short-term processes and outcomes. That is, for education we analyze recent violence shocks and current school attendance, which differs from many previous studies. Our finding that the impacts on education outcomes are gender-specific are in line with robust findings in other conflict-affected settings (e.g. Shemyakina, 2011).

# **6.3 Policy implications**

More broadly, our findings add important nuances to the understanding of the challenges that situations of forced displacement and armed conflict entail. It has become increasingly clear that many behaviors and outcomes in such settings will not have mono-causal or mono-level explanations. We use an intersectionality lens to contribute detailed insights into the interplay of forced displacement, gender and violence in jointly shaping crisis responses at the household, adult and child levels. Our outcomes of interest – adverse coping behaviors in food security, school attendance and economic activity – are key targets of support interventions in crisis and displacement settings.

Therefore, our findings on the compounding challenges stemming from forced displacement, gender and violence challenge some of the ways in which many policies and programs are designed. For example, policies and interventions to support women in conflict settings have often sought to address gender inequalities or the needs of the displaced in isolation. Yet, our findings emphasize the need for and potential of concerted policy approaches that account for the intersectionality of gender and displacement in these settings. The findings confirm that effective support for women should target IDPs, but that it should also try to alleviate the additional challenges and burdens IDP women face due to their gender.

# **7 Conclusion**

Our paper shows that in conflict crises, gender, forced displacement and violence can create compounding challenges across multiple levels of observation. Such an interplay of factors across levels and contexts emphasizes the importance of _intersectionality_ for understanding behaviors and outcomes in crisis settings. Our empirical evidence from North-east Nigeria suggests that coping behaviors at the household, adult and child levels are interlinked and strongly shaped by compounding challenges that stem from gender, forced displacement status and local violence shocks.

These compounding challenges have significant welfare implications and create particular risks and vulnerabilities for specific groups of households and individuals. We find that IDP households, rural households, households with many children, and those that rely more on female breadwinners are particularly vulnerable, and that these disadvantages also put children’s well-being and education 15