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During protracted displacement, women and girls often face serious gender-specific challenges and vulnerabilities, including adverse norms and institutional barriers. Using survey data from 18,533 displaced and non-displaced individuals in El Fasher, Sudan, we document that livelihoods are significantly shaped by a strong and complex intersectionality between long-term displacement and gender. IDP women work more (including paid labour, on- and off-farm self-employment) than non-IDP women but are poorer, on average. For men, there is no such difference in employment between IDPs and non-IDPs. These outcomes are the result of the 'double burden of female protracted displacement'. First, norms and institutions at the destination create access barriers to decent employment (due to women's displacement status). Second, norms and institutions at the place of origin create endowment barriers to decent employment (due to their gender). The double burden is strongest for older displaced women. By contrast, protracted displacement can be an (educational) opportunity for girls who grow up in displacement. Future policies should address the challenges stemming from the intersectionality of gender and protracted displacement by reducing past and contemporary institutional barriers and market asymmetries facing IDP women and by targeting the particular vulnerabilities older IDP women carry, enabling better education and training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Food insecurity and violent conflict are global challenges and causally linked to each other in many ways. • We provide a brief survey over key themes in the quantitative literature on this nexus. • We focus on the micro-level, the role of conflict type, heterogeneity, resilience, and humanitarian crises. • Little is known about how to design effective policies to help households escape combined conflict-hunger traps. • Finally, better data at the micro-level will provide a large boost to much needed research in this field. Abstract We review briefly recent trends in food security and violent conflict and the quantitative literature discussing their interactions, as reflected by the papers in this special issue. We find a large diversity in experiences of food security and conflict, posing a challenge for causal identification which can be resolved by spatially disaggregated, high frequency micro-level data on both food security and conflict. We identify examples of strong individual and institutional capacities to cope with conflict, maintaining food security against the odds across very diverse settings, stressing the importance in accounting for the type of conflict at the micro-level. We also discuss how the concept of resilience is a useful lens for understanding household food security in conflict settings and we outline how food insecurity and conflict can lead to protracted crises. Finally, we identify future research topics in this field. Overall, the special issue contributes to the literature on food security and violent conflict by highlighting three insights: First, the need for adequate data to advance the analytical and policy agendas; second, the diversity of experiences of conflict and food security; and, third, the decisive role played by specific practices and policies in smoothing the negative effects of conflicts for food security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • This paper studies the effect of the 2014 conflict on household food security and resilience in the Gaza Strip. • Food security of Palestinian households in the Gaza Strip was not directly affected by the 2014 conflict. • Resilience that is necessary to resist food insecurity declined among Gazan households as a result of the conflict. • The reduction of adaptive capacity was driven by the deterioration of income stability and income diversification. • The conflict increased the use of social safety nets and access to basic services for the exposed households. Abstract This paper studies how conflict affects household resilience capacity and food security, drawing on panel data collected from households in Palestine before and after the 2014 Gaza conflict. During this escalation of violence, the majority of the damages in the Gaza Strip were concentrated close to the Israeli border. Using the distance to the Israeli border to identify the effect of the conflict at the household level through an instrumental variable approach, we find that the food security of households in the Gaza Strip was not directly affected by the conflict. However, household resilience capacity that is necessary to resist food insecurity declined among Gazan households as a result of the conflict. This was mainly due to a reduction of adaptive capacity, driven by the deterioration of income stability and income diversification. However, the conflict actually increased the use of social safety nets (expressed in the form of cash, in-kind or other transfers that were received by the households) and access to basic services (mainly access to sanitation) for the households exposed to the conflict. This finding may be related to the support provided to households in the Gaza Strip by national and international organizations after the end of the conflict. From a policy perspective, the case of the conflict in the Gaza Strip demonstrates that immediate and significant support to victims of conflict can indeed help restore resilience capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Food insecurity and violent conflict are global challenges and causally linked to each other in many ways. • We provide a brief survey over key themes in the quantitative literature on this nexus. • We focus on the micro-level, the role of conflict type, heterogeneity, resilience, and humanitarian crises. • Little is known about how to design effective policies to help households escape combined conflict-hunger traps. • Finally, better data at the micro-level will provide a large boost to much needed research in this field. Abstract We review briefly recent trends in food security and violent conflict and the quantitative literature discussing their interactions, as reflected by the papers in this special issue. We find a large diversity in experiences of food security and conflict, posing a challenge for causal identification which can be resolved by spatially disaggregated, high frequency micro-level data on both food security and conflict. We identify examples of strong individual and institutional capacities to cope with conflict, maintaining food security against the odds across very diverse settings, stressing the importance in accounting for the type of conflict at the micro-level. We also discuss how the concept of resilience is a useful lens for understanding household food security in conflict settings and we outline how food insecurity and conflict can lead to protracted crises. Finally, we identify future research topics in this field. Overall, the special issue contributes to the literature on food security and violent conflict by highlighting three insights: First, the need for adequate data to advance the analytical and policy agendas; second, the diversity of experiences of conflict and food security; and, third, the decisive role played by specific practices and policies in smoothing the negative effects of conflicts for food security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Each year billions of US-dollars of humanitarian assistance are mobilised in response to man-made emergencies and natural disasters. Yet, rigorous evidence for how best to intervene remains scant. This dearth reflects that rigorous impact evaluations of humanitarian assistance pose major methodological, practical and ethical challenges. While theory-based impact evaluations can crucially inform humanitarian programming, popular methods, such as orthodox RCTs, are less suitable. Instead, factorial designs and quasi-experimental designs can be ethical and robust, answering questions about how to improve the delivery of assistance. We argue that it helps to be prepared, planning impact evaluations before the onset of emergencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including the economic impact of violent conflicts, reallocation of resources, and the economic impact of the Darfur conflict.