The Geography of Conflict Diamonds: The Case of Sierra Leone

Type Working Paper
Title The Geography of Conflict Diamonds: The Case of Sierra Leone
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2016
URL https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-39931-7_32
Abstract
In the early 1990s, Sierra Leone entered into nearly 10 years of civil war. The ease of accessibility to the country’s diamonds is said to have provided the funding needed to sustain the insurgency over the years. According to Le Billon, the spatial dispersion of a resource is a major defining feature of a war. Using geographic information systems to create a realistic landscape and theory to ground agent behavior, an agent-based model is developed to explore Le Billon’s claim. Different scenarios are explored as the diamond mines are made secure and the mining areas are moved from rural areas to the capital. It is found that unexpected consequences can come from minimally increasing security when the mining sites are in rural regions, potentially displacing conflict rather than removing it. On the other hand, minimal security may be sufficient to prevent conflict when resources are found in the city.

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