Growth and livelihoods in conflict: findings from SLRC’s review of the evidence

07 December 2012

This month, the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium (SLRC) explores the evidence on growth, economic activity and livelihoods in conflict-affected situations, drawing on secondary research carried out during the Consortium’s inception year.

Three outputs are now available to view or download on SLRC’s new website:

The full working paper – “Growth and Livelihoods in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Situations” – maps out the evidence base, identifies key messages and findings, and pinpoints gaps and weaknesses in the literature.

The working paper is accompanied by a 4-page briefing paper –“Growth and livelihoods in conflict-affected situations: what do we know?” Summarising the main findings of the review, the briefing paper pulls out three key messages:

1. The evidence base on growth and livelihoods in conflict-affected situations is comprised of four distinct ‘categories’ of evidence
2. We know strikingly little about the impacts of livelihood and economic interventions in conflict-affected environments, and programming choices often appear to be driven by assumptions of effectiveness and unsubstantiated narratives of success
3. Conflict-affected economies demonstrate surprisingly  strong GDP growth rates, but methodological weaknesses suggest the data need to be treated with great caution

And finally, an SLRC blog post – “Mind the gap: the fragile state of the impact evidence base” – by SLRC research officer, Richard Mallett, highlights a major challenge to evidence-based policy making: how do you justify programming choices when the evidence you need simply isn’t there?

These three new outputs can all be found on SLRC’s website alongside a series of country-focused reviews, from Afghanistan to Uganda.