1 00:00:01,500 --> 00:00:13,620 Okay. So today I would like to present some preliminary findings and steps towards quantifying conflict, perform five dimensions. 2 00:00:13,920 --> 00:00:20,220 So first, I would like to talk a bit about protracted conflicts and why they are actually so specific and complicated. 3 00:00:21,180 --> 00:00:27,180 Then I would like to look at current quantitative approaches and discuss look a 4 00:00:27,240 --> 00:00:33,389 bit how well they are equipped to assess and analyse those type of conflicts. 5 00:00:33,390 --> 00:00:38,370 And from the title, you can already say that I'm a little bit much happier about how they deal with them. 6 00:00:38,640 --> 00:00:50,370 So we try to offer a solution for this, which to certain extent brings micro-level conflict analyses and micro-level conflict analysis together. 7 00:00:51,150 --> 00:00:58,800 So in some of the set, my, my, my job and conflict platform is basically to quantify those five dimensions. 8 00:00:59,010 --> 00:01:05,460 And when I started thinking about that, I realised, well, if I want to quantify which actors are involved, 9 00:01:06,510 --> 00:01:11,069 which methods are using conflict and we want to go beyond the state borders, 10 00:01:11,070 --> 00:01:18,210 I actually need to know where the conflict is, where the violence is happening, but I don't have the guidance of the state borders. 11 00:01:18,220 --> 00:01:26,610 So I realised that you need to actually create a new geographical unit which more accurately portrays conflicts, 12 00:01:27,000 --> 00:01:31,710 sometimes called quantitative conflict research, as they call it, conflict zones. 13 00:01:33,790 --> 00:01:43,409 So and as I mentioned, that we get protracted conflicts and actually we have 1040 cases which we use for analysis, 14 00:01:43,410 --> 00:01:51,120 for searching, for patterns of change in conflict, and we try to pin up cases. 15 00:01:51,870 --> 00:01:57,060 Some of them are protracted conflicts according to definition of International Red Cross. 16 00:01:57,720 --> 00:02:04,260 And three, Mexico, Nigeria and Ukraine. They are conflicts with the potential becoming to become protracted. 17 00:02:06,120 --> 00:02:09,420 So what is essentially a protracted conflict? 18 00:02:11,220 --> 00:02:17,070 There's is a quote from International Red Cross which says that typically involve a tangled history 19 00:02:17,070 --> 00:02:22,530 of several different and sometimes simultaneous conflicts means that it might start as one, 20 00:02:22,920 --> 00:02:26,309 but suddenly it's at some point it mutated. 21 00:02:26,310 --> 00:02:30,390 It creates new, complicated swallows and other conflicts, etc., etc. 22 00:02:31,500 --> 00:02:39,810 And the complexity the complexity of those protracted conflict is often given by the longevity and intractability. 23 00:02:40,350 --> 00:02:45,690 So that complex lots of factors are involved and they last very long. 24 00:02:47,490 --> 00:02:53,010 So there and now I would like to talk about a few specific characteristics which 25 00:02:53,160 --> 00:02:57,960 can make actually quantitative analyses of those type of complex really difficult. 26 00:02:59,550 --> 00:03:06,870 So for example, there's often change of the main conflict issue. 27 00:03:07,290 --> 00:03:11,700 So if you look, for example, at one of our focus, Horn of Africa, 28 00:03:12,270 --> 00:03:20,159 we can see that the conflict in Somalia or one of Africa started actually with the Somali is the satisfaction with the borders. 29 00:03:20,160 --> 00:03:26,910 After they got independence, they started civil border conflicts with Kenya and Ethiopia. 30 00:03:27,390 --> 00:03:39,280 So it was international, basically a conflict. But then the escalation of those conflicts led to the ousting of the president of the Somali president, 31 00:03:39,280 --> 00:03:45,600 in part because it led to increase of the opposition through to this autocratic rule. 32 00:03:46,050 --> 00:03:53,280 There was no central power. Then once you started fighting more and more for resources and power and this this 33 00:03:53,280 --> 00:04:00,209 vacuum was actually grabbed by some Islamist groups and left to Islamist insurgency, 34 00:04:00,210 --> 00:04:07,080 we could see I see you then, al-Shabab, etc., etc., and the rise of the Islamist at some point. 35 00:04:07,080 --> 00:04:11,850 Let's also do some interventions from out of state. 36 00:04:13,170 --> 00:04:19,710 If you look at databases, you would see all those things as a separate conflict in most of the situations. 37 00:04:19,860 --> 00:04:24,440 Right. But essentially it's a one conflict which is very long and very complicated. 38 00:04:26,340 --> 00:04:32,010 There's another thing, those conflicts, they often change their location. 39 00:04:32,280 --> 00:04:36,389 So here we have a Boko Haram activity or Boko Haram ensure against that. 40 00:04:36,390 --> 00:04:46,710 Adults here, those are basically violent events that win the battle, for example, and this is 2009, basically the start of the insurgency here. 41 00:04:47,430 --> 00:04:56,190 And here we have Nigeria. Then we can hope that in 2011 the conflict expanded. 42 00:04:57,000 --> 00:05:07,170 Right? In 2014, we see some actors in the conflict and we see that the conflict is moving more towards the borders. 43 00:05:07,470 --> 00:05:17,040 And you can actually see that it's getting to come. Everyone here in 2016, we see that the conflict is much smaller this way. 44 00:05:17,040 --> 00:05:20,580 More actors and it's crossing borders even more. 45 00:05:21,380 --> 00:05:26,630 Right. Another thing, borders. 46 00:05:26,630 --> 00:05:32,660 It's not only that the conflicts are changing their locations, but they are very often freely crossing the borders. 47 00:05:33,140 --> 00:05:41,810 Briefing open borders are something which contacts people specific often, but not not, not really often. 48 00:05:41,810 --> 00:05:48,110 And especially in the areas where we see those protracted conflicts, the borders are very often arbitrary, they are social construct. 49 00:05:48,440 --> 00:05:52,670 And for example, in Africa, very often we start with the colonial history. 50 00:05:53,360 --> 00:06:03,169 So people tend to ignore them. The local people, you can see a lot of smuggling of people, guns, goods, etc., and people challenge them. 51 00:06:03,170 --> 00:06:11,239 A lot of a lot of movements trying to secede from their states actually starts in borderland borders of border regions. 52 00:06:11,240 --> 00:06:19,400 They say they are now often safe havens because the authority of the states are very often limited, because they are very remote. 53 00:06:22,990 --> 00:06:28,500 And a lot of things which I would like to mention and which makes the quantitative analyses very complicated, 54 00:06:28,500 --> 00:06:36,960 is that lots of protracted conflicts but also other conflicts, they create new conflicts. 55 00:06:37,290 --> 00:06:45,990 So for example, if you look at the one of our focuses, Myanmar, we see there is lots of rebel groups. 56 00:06:46,080 --> 00:06:50,940 Right. And for example, kind of the groups, I think the central government of Myanmar, 57 00:06:51,270 --> 00:06:59,160 they often rely on on the support of current refugees who reside often in Thailand. 58 00:06:59,880 --> 00:07:03,280 Right. But the Myanmar government doesn't really like that much, 59 00:07:03,280 --> 00:07:08,610 that Thailand essentially provides a safe haven and some resources to the rebels fighting them. 60 00:07:08,910 --> 00:07:14,070 So in 2010, 2012, we could see some border skirmishes because of that issue. 61 00:07:17,910 --> 00:07:28,739 We can see also escalation of the old conflict. In 1994, after the genocide in Rwanda, a lot of Hutus, they fled to surrounding countries. 62 00:07:28,740 --> 00:07:36,180 Many of them went to Zaire or from the Democratic Republic of Congo of Rwanda. 63 00:07:36,180 --> 00:07:42,360 One, the government wanted to prosecute those people who committed genocide because many of those refugees, 64 00:07:42,360 --> 00:07:49,470 very few of the members of the militia, but the president of Zaire, Mobutu, he didn't want to do that. 65 00:07:49,950 --> 00:08:01,770 So Rwandan government started arming the local Tutsis inside and also enlisted Laurent Kabila to fight against the go against desire. 66 00:08:02,290 --> 00:08:13,180 President, of course, was what the president was autocratically autocratic presidents who faced opposition before him were protest. 67 00:08:13,560 --> 00:08:19,680 There were deaths. So we could say that we could see before a violent political conflict. 68 00:08:19,920 --> 00:08:26,550 But what happened after enlisting Kabila? That was one of the bloodiest war in Africa. 69 00:08:28,930 --> 00:08:36,040 Right. Just to wrap it up, we can see that the protracted conflict, they often mutate. 70 00:08:37,630 --> 00:08:45,040 They changed their original contested issue. That's that's why it's very hard to track that in a lot of databases. 71 00:08:45,730 --> 00:08:56,080 Then they changed location from one part to another, which might be difficult to actually find out the the geographical variables, 72 00:08:56,080 --> 00:08:58,960 which can affect, for example, how long the conflict is. 73 00:08:59,710 --> 00:09:09,940 And then they cross the borders, which very often means that in quantitative databases, they are actually assigned or listed as a different conflict, 74 00:09:09,940 --> 00:09:15,520 because conflicts are very often split based on on the state location or made location in the state. 75 00:09:16,030 --> 00:09:20,830 And then it creates conflicts, conflicts which are often perceived as unrelated. 76 00:09:22,890 --> 00:09:28,920 Right. So let's have a look how the current approaches tackle those issues. 77 00:09:30,710 --> 00:09:37,100 So very often when you look at quantitative analyses of states, we come to this analysis of conflicts, 78 00:09:38,000 --> 00:09:41,690 especially now that you have a state you think would see that the state was the unit of analysis. 79 00:09:42,950 --> 00:09:47,840 But we know that conflicts are usually limited to one of the central parts of states. 80 00:09:48,190 --> 00:09:51,870 Right. And they do not respect borders. 81 00:09:52,560 --> 00:09:53,370 We know, for example, 82 00:09:53,370 --> 00:10:05,550 from wealth and we are aware that the state level that such as GDP per capita population density are very different in those zones of conflict. 83 00:10:05,880 --> 00:10:10,140 Then if you look at the average level of those of those are at. 84 00:10:12,310 --> 00:10:20,290 Then we could see at some point that some research is starting from on box states that look what is inside. 85 00:10:21,400 --> 00:10:28,540 They try to look who reveals which ethnic groups, which ethnic groups are more prone to rebellion, more prone to challenge to the state. 86 00:10:28,570 --> 00:10:32,530 But again, they just opened the box, but they didn't go beyond the borders. 87 00:10:33,280 --> 00:10:42,070 Now, ethnic relationships, they are trying to they actually have a database of cross-border ethnic ties, which is a nice offer. 88 00:10:42,280 --> 00:10:45,309 But still there is the border which separates ethnic groups. 89 00:10:45,310 --> 00:10:51,790 So then you have, of course the Kurds and you have four or five ethnic groups in the database, 90 00:10:52,090 --> 00:10:57,610 but they are Kurds and it's sometimes difficult and analyses to put the link together. 91 00:11:01,290 --> 00:11:07,620 Then you see this research is focussed on actors, on specific actors, usually armed groups, 92 00:11:09,150 --> 00:11:18,300 and they look at how certain characteristics of those actors actually affect, for example, how long the conflict lasts, how lethal the conflict is. 93 00:11:19,680 --> 00:11:26,480 But the problem is that the actors do not offer it in a backroom. If you look, for example, at Colombia, you cannot just look at spark. 94 00:11:26,490 --> 00:11:38,940 You need to look at other guerrilla or other paramilitaries because the characteristics affect the activities of the other armed groups in the region. 95 00:11:40,630 --> 00:11:49,380 The forward was definitely looking at conflict sites, looking at rebel government power. 96 00:11:49,410 --> 00:11:55,540 If you're a rebel, rebel, Fabricio. But the problem is that the conflict is not always only about Dias. 97 00:11:55,560 --> 00:11:59,460 It's not just the pair of actors. It's more. It's more complicated. 98 00:12:00,460 --> 00:12:12,750 Then recently you can see that there's lots of data collection efforts where, for example, you see TV reference even to your friends conflict events. 99 00:12:13,050 --> 00:12:19,050 Think of for actual data where you actually get data on individual violent events. 100 00:12:19,950 --> 00:12:24,030 Right. And those are often linked to actors or diets of actors. 101 00:12:24,360 --> 00:12:26,530 And for example, Cuba and Gladiator, 102 00:12:26,580 --> 00:12:35,490 they try to forecast conflict onset and conflict termination by looking at classic variables for prediction of civil war, 103 00:12:35,790 --> 00:12:46,710 but also adding to those that it's a dyadic analysis of some information about the conflict events. 104 00:12:48,690 --> 00:12:52,810 They found that it can actually help with a bit with the forecast, but not much. 105 00:12:52,830 --> 00:12:57,000 It was not really a substantial improvement. 106 00:12:57,360 --> 00:13:03,660 Well, I believe it's because the conflict diet is not the accurate portrait of the situation. 107 00:13:04,050 --> 00:13:11,910 So let's have a look at the map. For example, here we have a conflict events in Colombia, conflicts that are in 2001. 108 00:13:12,420 --> 00:13:16,499 And if you focus on the state, we get only those blue dots. 109 00:13:16,500 --> 00:13:20,309 But there are some, for example here, red ones which are not included, 110 00:13:20,310 --> 00:13:29,910 even though this is a dot which in HBO's FAQ, if you look at armed groups and we focus on fire, 111 00:13:30,630 --> 00:13:41,970 then again the blue dots are represents for fighters involved, but the red dots usually is yellow and and government or other other groups. 112 00:13:43,200 --> 00:13:47,610 So we basically lose quite a bit of information about the conflict. 113 00:13:48,330 --> 00:13:53,160 And now we can look at the diet for some FARDC and government. 114 00:13:53,550 --> 00:13:57,420 And again, we have even more red dots here. 115 00:13:58,050 --> 00:14:01,920 So the point is we try to put all those things together in a reasonable way. 116 00:14:02,850 --> 00:14:09,540 One more thing here. And suddenly, because of the construct of contrast, you can really see it's here. 117 00:14:09,540 --> 00:14:17,189 We can see basically a network of of of interactions between different actors so that on the 118 00:14:17,190 --> 00:14:24,570 phone there is fighting fire and the LRA and then paramilitaries are fighting for an ILA in 2001. 119 00:14:24,720 --> 00:14:34,970 If you look at the longer period, you see more complicated picture we see here part ELN, some paramilitaries part of added to it. 120 00:14:34,980 --> 00:14:39,330 It's a threat to that. I'm sorry. It's not that visible because of the contrast. 121 00:14:39,330 --> 00:14:45,280 Yeah. Okay. Can you just explain the correctly? Well, the thing is that the rebels. 122 00:14:45,320 --> 00:14:49,080 What's supposed to look like this? 123 00:14:49,410 --> 00:14:58,450 Yeah. And that basically shows how the great is basically the number of conflict events between those actors. 124 00:14:58,450 --> 00:15:03,600 So you can see that. Okay, that's touch screen. Okay. 125 00:15:04,680 --> 00:15:08,450 Okay. Oh, how do I do it this way? 126 00:15:08,460 --> 00:15:11,530 No. So. 127 00:15:11,910 --> 00:15:17,680 So are you saying that at the beginning it was the government against fall that was 2001? 128 00:15:17,890 --> 00:15:27,880 Yeah. But as time went by here and became more significant, its aggregate of from 1989 to 2016. 129 00:15:28,300 --> 00:15:36,220 The point of this picture just better here is that you can see that the government is fighting for Ilan people. 130 00:15:36,910 --> 00:15:42,520 Then we have a paramilitary starting fighting those blasting Gary off. 131 00:15:42,790 --> 00:15:45,340 Then we have added to it cartels. 132 00:15:45,550 --> 00:15:52,030 And the lines actually shows you how all these actors are connected and the connections are essentially the bubbles between them. 133 00:15:52,570 --> 00:15:57,550 And this demonstrates that diets are just not enough. 134 00:16:00,030 --> 00:16:04,050 Right. So you have the approaches to conflict. 135 00:16:04,890 --> 00:16:08,110 The conflict analysis are conflict. 136 00:16:08,130 --> 00:16:12,210 So lots of research is doing quantitative research that express the need for conflict zones, 137 00:16:12,780 --> 00:16:19,200 going beyond state borders and create conflict zones, which would actually move with time, which would not be static. 138 00:16:22,410 --> 00:16:27,140 But that's a that's that's not that easy. 139 00:16:27,270 --> 00:16:35,010 Joe One of the first things was in 2012 by Buhari and Gates, and they basically create a conflict scope. 140 00:16:35,280 --> 00:16:39,960 The conflict scope is this circle, the circle here. 141 00:16:40,170 --> 00:16:47,130 What they did, they'd look at conflicts, find a central point, and then do a circle around it. 142 00:16:47,400 --> 00:16:55,170 And they look at the area, how big the ice, and they try to correlate with, for example, how long the conflict is. 143 00:16:55,350 --> 00:16:59,969 And they found larger. The scope is longer. The conflict this but this. 144 00:16:59,970 --> 00:17:05,310 You can see it's not really accurate representation of what is happening here. 145 00:17:05,640 --> 00:17:11,010 One of the newest attempts is by BEARDSLEY and Lo. 146 00:17:11,580 --> 00:17:21,900 And they basically look at the at the conflict events and try to create a complex how here and you can see here these dots are the conflict. 147 00:17:22,200 --> 00:17:25,970 So basically create a shape which would include all those conflict movements. 148 00:17:26,970 --> 00:17:32,310 Yes, you can see here. I mean, this is this is one, you know, here, here, here, here and here. 149 00:17:32,320 --> 00:17:36,389 So this bit here might not be part of the conflict at all. 150 00:17:36,390 --> 00:17:39,510 So, again, it's not really accurate representation of this. 151 00:17:39,840 --> 00:17:49,889 Not to mention that they are using conflict strong solar data, which essentially in most of the cases that present in combat is quite good. 152 00:17:49,890 --> 00:17:56,060 They use the conflict groups government of Colombia far beyond EPA. 153 00:17:56,080 --> 00:18:01,590 But if you look, for example, at Nigeria and Somalia, most of the conflict are conflicts. 154 00:18:01,950 --> 00:18:07,590 According to Uppsala, the equal diets. As I said, the situation is much more complicated. 155 00:18:07,980 --> 00:18:12,810 So what we need to do, we need to create a geographical unit which would be changing over time, 156 00:18:13,950 --> 00:18:19,650 would not be dependent on state borders, and would address the connections between different related conflicts. 157 00:18:20,640 --> 00:18:29,490 So how do we do that before? Before I start, I would like to say our definition of war or conflict is based on Goldstone. 158 00:18:29,820 --> 00:18:33,299 And he said that war is essentially legal. 159 00:18:33,300 --> 00:18:40,230 Intergroup violence. Legal means that it costs at least one fatality and think that means that we focus on actors 160 00:18:40,230 --> 00:18:47,070 by when we try to define their their geographical limits and their interactions between them. 161 00:18:48,330 --> 00:18:57,059 So first, we look at each of our conflict four brigades and identify the main conflicts and then look at the and try to find relate the conflict. 162 00:18:57,060 --> 00:19:01,290 Basically trace the evolution of the evolution of the conflict over time. 163 00:19:02,370 --> 00:19:06,990 Once you have this, you look inside of those conflicts and identify the relevant actors. 164 00:19:09,270 --> 00:19:11,210 We get the little girl along at the top. 165 00:19:11,220 --> 00:19:21,660 So our data and then we use the the conflict events from the start and identify the relevant events by looking at if that event, 166 00:19:21,660 --> 00:19:27,120 if includes two or parallel actors basically are two role actors are clashing. 167 00:19:27,750 --> 00:19:39,840 That's our events and that even should help us to draw the geographically in that so example how we actually do it here. 168 00:19:40,320 --> 00:19:45,990 Boko Haram insurgency as I wrote here, quantitative tracing since 2009. 169 00:19:46,440 --> 00:19:55,860 What I mean is that I'm doing the quantitative part of the project and quantitatively the conflict demonstrates in the data we saw in 2009, 170 00:19:55,890 --> 00:20:03,690 not before the qualitative part of the project of the conflict, but you can actually trace the rules before 2009. 171 00:20:04,200 --> 00:20:11,459 But I'm focusing on 2000 and because of the data. So the main topic is the Islamists instruments led by Boko Haram. 172 00:20:11,460 --> 00:20:18,780 But later on it was joined by other groups. The really the conflicts is sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni. 173 00:20:19,830 --> 00:20:29,820 And as you point out, there are some other conflicts in in in Nigeria, Niger, Delta, separatism, and then also found pastoralist conflict. 174 00:20:30,060 --> 00:20:37,350 But we didn't include them because they are not related to Islamist insurgency or sectarian violence here. 175 00:20:38,460 --> 00:20:41,970 The Niger Delta have the presence of the reason for for nothing, 176 00:20:41,970 --> 00:20:47,700 principally because it's the different location and the actors are not almost at all connected. 177 00:20:48,030 --> 00:20:55,679 The foreign fighters conflict, it's a little bit complicated, but because we are we do not rely only on quantitative data. 178 00:20:55,680 --> 00:20:59,190 We are also regional experts like I'm also people who did fieldwork in those. 179 00:20:59,580 --> 00:21:02,470 Then for cases we can always when we are not sure. 180 00:21:02,490 --> 00:21:10,040 So for example, here we are not sure about the income from customers, but we can reach out to them and discuss whether we should include it. 181 00:21:10,050 --> 00:21:18,750 But it also conflicts are actually related. And although some of the actors here in this conflict are Muslims and you could see, 182 00:21:18,750 --> 00:21:26,540 oh, I see Christian-Muslim conflict dynamic here based on the discussion, 183 00:21:26,550 --> 00:21:39,420 the expert panel say that actually Boko Haram either recruits or side with with the Muslims in in this conflict, it's more random. 184 00:21:40,020 --> 00:21:47,420 So based on that, we identify the following actors and then selected the conflict events. 185 00:21:47,430 --> 00:21:51,860 So I can actually show your mom. Oh, okay. 186 00:21:52,500 --> 00:21:56,350 Yeah. Just a moment. 187 00:21:58,150 --> 00:22:03,730 Right. So here we see a map of Nigeria. 188 00:22:03,760 --> 00:22:09,130 The blue dots are those we can include in the in our conflict setting and the red dots, which not. 189 00:22:09,430 --> 00:22:17,350 So you can see how is it actually changing? And it's a and it's moving slowly more towards the borders and it's crossing the borders here. 190 00:22:18,250 --> 00:22:25,450 So I will stop it here. Just to show you what are examples of the blue dots, the blue dots here, for example, in Nigeria. 191 00:22:25,450 --> 00:22:36,460 And this long name is essentially Boko Haram. Here the red dots are type of fighting or cluster the farmers herders conflict. 192 00:22:37,150 --> 00:22:45,950 Right. Okay. When you get back, you can look at Columbia, which is different. 193 00:22:45,950 --> 00:22:52,160 It's not a sub state conflict. It's not located in a in a in a region of the state. 194 00:22:52,370 --> 00:22:56,680 It's essentially covering all state and global pressing borders do. 195 00:22:57,320 --> 00:23:04,729 The main conflict here is Columbia versus left in Gary are the related conflicts or the evolution of the conflict which you could trace? 196 00:23:04,730 --> 00:23:09,560 Is the paramilitaries fighting lesbian guerilla? 197 00:23:09,800 --> 00:23:18,320 Then we have drug cartels and other criminal groups joining in and here is the loss of the role of access. 198 00:23:18,320 --> 00:23:22,910 We go and I can show you again the map. 199 00:23:35,700 --> 00:23:39,800 Yeah. It's much faster on my laptop. Hmm. 200 00:23:40,620 --> 00:23:44,699 Okay. Here we go. So, again, the blue dots are the ones which we include. 201 00:23:44,700 --> 00:23:47,850 And the red dots, which we don't. 202 00:23:49,970 --> 00:23:54,680 In this iteration, the red dots are slightly different and I will pause it and explain it. 203 00:23:55,250 --> 00:24:01,760 You see quite a lot of red dots here, and that's related to our definition of conflict or of war. 204 00:24:02,000 --> 00:24:10,580 When you say intergroup violence, but many of those dots are fake, which is a relevant actor and civilians. 205 00:24:11,150 --> 00:24:17,000 The problem with this here is that we don't really know whether civilians represent a specific group or not. 206 00:24:17,270 --> 00:24:22,760 Can it might not be intergroup violence, but it might be within group violence just to send a new signal within groups. 207 00:24:22,920 --> 00:24:30,080 Right. So we do not include it for our drawing of of the geographical unit. 208 00:24:31,910 --> 00:24:45,290 But as you can see you later, it doesn't matter much because those which are civilians and and the relevant actors are mostly in the same area. 209 00:24:45,470 --> 00:24:49,160 As far as the Intergroup of Violence. 210 00:24:49,850 --> 00:24:56,300 Also, again, we discuss these allegations of those thoughts and of those events with the regional experts. 211 00:24:56,600 --> 00:25:03,860 And they they point out if we actually missed something important or some important part or region of the conflict and then we can correct, 212 00:25:03,860 --> 00:25:09,980 we can actually go and try to trace further the events of the violence against civilians in that specific region. 213 00:25:10,220 --> 00:25:13,850 Actually, it was intergroup violence or not, and then we can include it. 214 00:25:16,340 --> 00:25:26,450 Right now, how do we actually draw that new geographical if we basically create a conflict polygon? 215 00:25:26,810 --> 00:25:31,820 So first we start with the dots. Those are the identified groups for Boko Haram insurgency. 216 00:25:32,990 --> 00:25:36,440 And this is just, for example, 2014. 217 00:25:37,070 --> 00:25:48,770 So one dots here. So while evens are dots, then we create a area which is triggered by the dots, and we use for that algorithm for a concave hub, 218 00:25:50,810 --> 00:25:58,580 which I believe is more precise than the previous one, the convex whole, which I show by the blood and law. 219 00:25:59,210 --> 00:26:04,460 So the difference between concave and convex whole is the following. 220 00:26:04,460 --> 00:26:11,780 We have the events here and that can be a shameful borders or a conflict zone here. 221 00:26:12,410 --> 00:26:16,460 And convex hull would be the whole thing here. 222 00:26:18,050 --> 00:26:22,970 But nothing is happening over here. That's why we use concave wall instead of the convex. 223 00:26:22,970 --> 00:26:31,700 How to avoid this empty space. The interesting thing is that in international relations or conflict with that you usually see convex hull. 224 00:26:31,700 --> 00:26:33,170 So people will improve this. 225 00:26:33,500 --> 00:26:41,720 But if you go to environmental literature or for example before studies, you see lots of variations of concave hull, which is more. 226 00:26:43,660 --> 00:26:50,080 So we have conquered hard, but we are not finished with this because we now that the chair of a reference conflict minerals are not always 227 00:26:50,080 --> 00:26:58,120 exactly accurate if it comes to education pride month study data for Afghanistan and you cross-reference them with, 228 00:26:58,120 --> 00:27:10,120 for example, information from soldiers and you find out that 75% of your friends events in books data have a special error of below 1550 kilometres. 229 00:27:10,120 --> 00:27:17,530 That means that basically 75% of the events are plus -50 kilometres correctly located. 230 00:27:17,890 --> 00:27:28,360 So to mitigate for this potential problem, we include the threat that is a blue line here as a buffer zone, which is essentially 50 kilometres here. 231 00:27:30,010 --> 00:27:35,680 And then we are not the cleanest there because you might say, okay, well, you have nice area, 232 00:27:35,680 --> 00:27:40,030 you see the shape and now you know nothing about it quantitatively, right? 233 00:27:40,960 --> 00:27:46,480 Was the population density you get population density for for state as such, maybe for administrative unit. 234 00:27:47,410 --> 00:27:51,790 That's why we link our data, 235 00:27:52,240 --> 00:28:00,160 our events and our our shape with real rate progress is it's a very nice project which 236 00:28:00,160 --> 00:28:08,140 is basically a square or great shape with resolutions of .5.5 decimal decrease. 237 00:28:08,540 --> 00:28:14,530 Great. So you can, you can imagine that you have a globe and you put a net of grids over it. 238 00:28:15,100 --> 00:28:22,030 And what is very interesting is that each of those little squares which are at the equator, 239 00:28:22,030 --> 00:28:29,350 50 by 30 kilometres, roughly, they contain information about population density, 240 00:28:30,100 --> 00:28:41,110 about discrimination of ethnic groups, nightlights, which can be nice proxies for economic development, also information about natural resources. 241 00:28:41,470 --> 00:28:52,630 Therefore, we get nice information about those crucial indicators for conflict for our, you know. 242 00:28:54,460 --> 00:28:58,510 So I, I just explain how we are. 243 00:28:58,510 --> 00:29:07,120 We actually built our our geographically in a four complex setting, but it certainly has some limitations. 244 00:29:07,650 --> 00:29:13,330 I I'm sure that you will find many more. And I'm looking for your feedback. 245 00:29:13,810 --> 00:29:18,580 So first of all, if you create new geographical units, you have access to less data. 246 00:29:18,760 --> 00:29:27,390 And that's true because lots of data are force states. Right. And it's very difficult to disaggregated and put that into the shape that you just read. 247 00:29:27,820 --> 00:29:32,580 But thanks to full breadth, we can actually mitigate for that and get all those databases spinning. 248 00:29:33,550 --> 00:29:42,490 Then you can say, Oh, we might have a possible selection bias. We are now currently working with ten cases and the selection is based is 249 00:29:42,490 --> 00:29:47,680 basically the protracted conflict that the UN has presents or strong presents, 250 00:29:47,860 --> 00:29:55,360 and those are specific cases you don't see strong, clear and present presence in Caucasus, in Russian part of Caucasus. 251 00:29:55,360 --> 00:30:01,270 Right. That's just not going to happen. But we are aware of that. 252 00:30:01,360 --> 00:30:04,600 We are aware of those specific characteristics. 253 00:30:06,040 --> 00:30:12,850 So I believe with the proper interpretation of the results and putting them into context, you can mitigate for it. 254 00:30:13,150 --> 00:30:17,650 Also, once we have all the data together and we are in the process of collection of the data, 255 00:30:18,070 --> 00:30:21,610 the two cases and in the process five more cases have not finished yet. 256 00:30:23,080 --> 00:30:31,480 I'm sure that we will be able to apply statistical methods such as matching to deal with that possible bias. 257 00:30:32,320 --> 00:30:37,209 And then as I mentioned already before, the you see typically that they suffer from severe biases. 258 00:30:37,210 --> 00:30:43,690 It can be again not it might be problems with accuracy of the data if it comes to location. 259 00:30:44,080 --> 00:30:50,620 Sometimes they are you can see that more remote area is less precise. 260 00:30:51,700 --> 00:30:57,580 The informations are or they can be completely missed. But again we forget that the buffer zone. 261 00:30:57,880 --> 00:31:03,520 So if the location is not precise, then we can actually mitigate for that. 262 00:31:03,730 --> 00:31:07,120 And again, we talk to the regional experts who do the field work there. 263 00:31:07,330 --> 00:31:14,890 Therefore, I'm sure if there would be some important event happening which could actually change the shape of our unit, 264 00:31:15,160 --> 00:31:20,560 we would not miss that, but we have also several advantages. 265 00:31:21,280 --> 00:31:25,810 So first of all, the geographical unit portrays much better in much by the way, 266 00:31:26,950 --> 00:31:31,750 what is actually happening in those four cases do not separate conflicts. 267 00:31:31,840 --> 00:31:36,190 If they are closely related, we put them reasonably together. 268 00:31:36,790 --> 00:31:40,320 Also, we can see the dynamic over time, right? 269 00:31:40,510 --> 00:31:43,630 You can see how is it developing? And that's the prior breath. 270 00:31:43,750 --> 00:31:55,000 We have not only information or a lot of data about the spatial about the geographical unit, but we have also lots of variation within that unit. 271 00:31:55,300 --> 00:32:00,070 You could see there was lots of breadth. So we get specific information for each of those squares. 272 00:32:02,080 --> 00:32:06,639 Last thing which I would like to say is that in the future, because we are still at the beginning, 273 00:32:06,640 --> 00:32:11,500 we are still collecting the data, we are still improving the methodology. 274 00:32:14,110 --> 00:32:28,990 The goal is to create methodological guidelines which which could help to assist people to build their own geographical unit of all. 275 00:32:29,260 --> 00:32:38,139 So think of organised violence for out of protracted conflicts, for example, those in the Caucasus and to hope those are the people. 276 00:32:38,140 --> 00:32:44,469 We are working on an interactive website and now hoping to write our package which could do quite a bit of that work, 277 00:32:44,470 --> 00:32:46,810 which I demonstrated fairly automatically. 278 00:32:46,810 --> 00:32:56,770 Our outcome of that is the work for other people and if we see that the other people are using, then we get more results. 279 00:32:57,460 --> 00:33:04,870 We can compare those results to problems of change in protracted conflicts and then we can actually generalise more from that. 280 00:33:06,460 --> 00:33:09,610 The ultimate goal is quantification of those five dimensions. 281 00:33:09,610 --> 00:33:14,589 And as I said, if you cannot quantify something, you cannot quantify the key indicators of conflict. 282 00:33:14,590 --> 00:33:18,399 If you don't know where is the conflict happening, what are the borders of the conflict? 283 00:33:18,400 --> 00:33:26,500 And if I am talking about borders, not only geographically. So for that we are working on the conflicts of thing. 284 00:33:26,830 --> 00:33:31,780 And once we have that, we actually now where the conflicts are, how they are developing, 285 00:33:31,780 --> 00:33:37,900 they can actually more precisely quantify how many ethnic groups are actually discriminated, 286 00:33:38,260 --> 00:33:41,739 what type of methods exactly are used in those specific areas, 287 00:33:41,740 --> 00:33:48,940 not on average in the whole state or some large areas around those following, but specifically in that country. 288 00:33:49,360 --> 00:33:53,950 And this can help us more to trace the changes are. 289 00:33:54,490 --> 00:33:57,580 In different dimensions and their impact on civilians. 290 00:33:58,660 --> 00:34:01,210 And that's it for me. Thank you for.