Abstract

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Armed conflict in Kashmir: A socioeconomic prognosis

GOUSIA KARIM, AJAZ AHMAD MALIK


The aim of this paper is to identify how individuals, households and communities are affected by violent conflict. Conflict and violence affect the welfare characteristics and choices of individuals and households in conflict areas. There are many socio-economic consequences of armed conflict. The armed conflict has a direct effect on health and economy of a household. However, the disturbing consequence of armed conflict can also be seen in the degree of social participation. The conflict hit individual or household find it difficult to be in consonance with the aspects of its society, may it be the participation in social functions or the behaviour towards the society. Conflict hit individual or/and family live in some kind of self styled social isolation by not taking part in the various social and community roles, which was otherwise actively been participated into, before being the victim of conflict. The paper will confine its domain to the impact of armed conflict on three inter-related variables of health, economy and social participation. The paper will also analyze the decline of economic status due to conflict as the causal factor for lesser social participation of these conflict hit individuals and families. Overall, this paper is aimed to explore the relation between the variables of armed conflict, health, economic status and social participation. The relation seems of the type, that the armed conflict affects the health of an individual (loss of human capital) which in turn alters the economic status and hence leads to effect social participation. However, the relation is not generalistic as the armed conflict can affect any of the above variables directly without altering the others. It is pertinent to mention here that the data for the current paper has been collected only from those households who happen to be direct victims of conflict. The victimization was in the form of death of a family member, disappearance of a family member or physical or psychological disease of a family member.