This MA Thesis explores the effect of the armed conflict on modern contraceptive utilisation
in Colombia, using a departmental random-effects logistic regression model on novel crosssectional
data from the Uppsala Peace and Conflict Database Georeferenced Event Data and
the Colombian Demographic and Health Surveys from 2000, 2005 and 2010. Reproductive
health and rights has enormous consequences for women’s lives, but their relationship to
conflict in Colombia has barely been analysed. Exploring how armed conflict as context shape
individual life choices such as family planning, the results showed that women in departments
where conflict had occurred recently had significantly higher odds of using modern
contraception on average than women in non-conflict. Women are likely more careful to avoid
unwanted pregnancy because of increased impoverishment, insecurity, and emotional and
physical stress of armed conflict. Conflict may also have reduced or more firmly decided their
demand for children. Adding an interaction term between conflict and type of place of
residence revealed that rural women in conflict departments were driving this finding, possibly
due to the lack of access to abortion and post-abortion care in rural areas in Colombia.