Economic impacts of armed violence

1
Economic impacts of armed violence

• Achim Wennmann, Small Arms Survey, Geneva

2
Approaching costly effects

• Going beyond the cost of armed conflict
• The bigger picture human, economic, and
  mobilisation costs
• Significance armed violence prevention and
  reduction

3
Measuring the costs of armed violence

• Different methods (modelling, contingent
  valuation, accounting methods)
• Great variations
• Issues of comparability
• (time period, types of violence methods,
  level of effect, etc.)
• Data limitations
• Measuring armed violence cost is a conceptual
  task

4
Examples of estimates

• Collier and Hoeffler 2004 64 billion for
  average civil war using modelling method
• IANSA et al 2007 18 billion annually cost of
  civil war using modelling
• Hess 2003 400 billion global cost of armed
  conflict using willingness to pay
• SAS 2006 Sri Lanka estimated cost of armed
  conflict estimated at between 2.2-15.8 GDP
  (annual)
• UNDP 2006 cost of armed violence estimated at
  USD 2.4 million (7.3 GDP) in 2005

5
Benefits of better estimates

• Advocacy on armed violence and development
• Create constituencies for armed violence
  reduction prevention
• Create a unity of perception of future losses in
  the present

6
Recommendations

• Enlarge the evidence base
• Enhance the methods to estimate the costly
  effects of armed violence
• Get a better understanding of the distributions
  of cost at the regional and sub-national level