When women are employed, research shows that they participate more in the peacebuilding process in Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria regions affected by Boko Haram attacks. This is measured by two main activities, either (i) their willingness to handle, prevent and resolve violent community disputes or conflicts, or (ii) willingness to participate in meetings to reduce crime in the community.
While Niger has the highest share (67% on average) of women engaged in meetings aiming to handle, prevent, and resolve community disputes, Cameroon and Nigeria have the lowest at 50%. Lack of employment opportunities for women might explain why they have been active participants in armed rebel groups over recent decades. Women members of Boko Haram comprise more than two-thirds of the group’s suicide attackers and killed more than 1,200 people between 2014 and 2018. In Nigeria, the most deadly incident in 2018 involved three women bombers who killed twenty people in a crowded marketplace.
Offering employment opportunities to women is essential for reducing their likelihood to participate in violence and increase their willingness to promote peace. Policies aiming to speed up women’s transition from unemployment to at least part-time jobs are likely to have a greater effect on supporting peacebuilding.
Women empowerment policies might also play a key role in such a context where women’s human capital is weak as parents fear sending their girl child to school to avoid kidnapping at the school place. In this sense, one way to consolidate peace might be to allocate conditional cash transfers which will be used to empower women through the creation of a new business or to support an existing one. Tax subsidies in favor of firms hiring a certain share of women might also be of great importance. Since women will be busy working either part-time or full-time, they become less vulnerable to terrorist group recruitment.
Featured images: First image (Anouk Delafortrie / Flickr), Second image (Ryan Brown / Flickr)
Eugenie Rose Fontepis an Economist passionate for peacebuilding. Her work interests aim to link issues of peacebuilding, conflict, fragility, and violence to development factors, including, labor market, education, and health outcomes among others. She conducts and has conducted severalresearchprojects on war survivors, refugees, internally displaced persons and the stateless community inCameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo,Kenya, Niger,Nigeria, andSierra Leoneamong others. She also contributes to the peace making process by participating in international peacebuilding related debates. The recent ones includeWIDER Development Conference: The puzzle of peace – towards inclusive development in fragile contextsor theUnited Nations Future Forum on the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). She holds a PhD in economics.
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