War and Schooling in South Sudan, 2013-2016

Abstract

South Sudan was embroiled in a civil war from mid-December 2013 to mid-September 2018. Nearly 400,000 people died, and several million were displaced. The economy nearly collapsed as the nation's output was severely reduced, causing inflation to soar. While prior research on the immediate humanitarian crisis in South Sudan has focused on forced displacement and food insecurity, there is little information available about the long-term impact the war had on human capital accumulation in this context. This analysis exploits spatial variation in exposure to violence to estimate the causal impact of the recent civil war on primary school enrollment as a proxy for measuring human capital accumulation. Results based on the difference-in-differences methodology indicate a statistically significant relationship between school enrollment and the war. The study shows that schools located in the South Sudanese war zones lost 85 children per year on average, or 18.5 percent of total enrollment. The diminishing trends in girls' enrollment are unrelated to the war, which is not surprising; social barriers, including gendered domestic roles, early marriage, and out-of-wedlock pregnancies, have long impeded female educational opportunities in South Sudan. These effects are robust to a number of specifications, including holding constant school-level fixed effects and adjusting for the standard errors. The article presents important policy implications for education and the labor market, both locally and internationally.

The impact of armed violence on students' educational attainment and the role of parents in resilience schooling and the education process

“…The results are consistent with earlier research that has been done. For instance, Mayai (2022) and Utsumi (2022) discussed how conflict can negatively affect educational attainment for kids who do attend school, increase the number of dropouts and students who are not enrolled in school, and lower educational survival rates due to displacement, difficult economic conditions are among other factors. The economy declined, the state’s capacity to deliver essential education services was severely damaged, and primary school enrolment fell precipitously.…”

“…This demonstrated the detrimental causal effect of conflict exposure in terms of reducing the number of school years spent by students and limiting their ability to advance through the grades. Armed violence can undermine the educational process in numerous ways, which may be the cause of this in some cases ( Mayai, 2022 ). First, schools in conflict affected zones are more likely to be destroyed or shuttered due to the danger of violence.…”

Providing Quality Education to School-Age Children in Times of War in Ukraine: A Netnographic Analysis

“…The contemporary scientific literature contains numerous studies investigating the impact of war on education in general and general secondary education in particular. All these studies clearly show that their authors are unanimous in the view that without access to education, school-age children will not be able to reach their true potential in the future (Guariso & Verpoorten, 2019;Santa Barbara, 2006;Mayai, 2022). Main reasons for a direct decline in the quality of general secondary education include: (Gindeel & Etim, 2014).…”

How to Maintain Education During Wars? An Integrative Approach to Ensure the Right to Education

“…War has catastrophic and radical outcomes, especially the children's loss of peace, security, health, equality, and psychological well-being that education creates (Mayai, 2020). Despite the fact that the right of children to education in armed conflicts is protected by international laws like the International Humanitarian Law (IHL) which is based on the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention (Doswald-Beck, 1989), these laws usually fall behind.…”