Neonatal and Infant Mortality under Violent Conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Elina Lindskog, Stockholm University

War-affected populations suffer from poor maternal health, infant mortality and pregnancy outcomes and during active stages of conflict the outcomes are even poorer due to factors associated to space and place as well as population dynamics and the duration of the conflict. During the Congolese wars the social upheaval and the violence unraveled unevenly. This allows for a regional analysis of neonatal and infant mortality outcome for women who gave birth during the conflict period in comparison to periods without conflict. This paper investigates the risk of neonatal and infant mortality across time and place. The analysis is based on a combined data set employing unique macro-level data on violent conflict at regional level that are linked to micro-level data on birth histories of individual women. The data used is from the Congo Demographic Health Survey (2007) and from Uppsala Conflict Data Program-Georeferenced Event Dataset.