Whether Armed Conflicts Impact Human Development?

The principal objective of wars is control over territory, resources, and human capital, either directly or through a proxy government. The majority of wars have ambiguous endings with inevitable future violence. If the situation is so grim when must wars end? In this study the author attempts to find the answer to this question by highlighting what is really crucial for the survival and future development of a country – human capital. Or more precisely the state of development of human capital. The reviewed literature treats armed conflicts as events, describing the negative impact as a result of a conflict. Author insists on treating armed conflict as a process and assessing the impact along the way. Based on the literature review, the author forms a hypothesis that each additional milestone of battle-deaths negatively impacts human development. The author chose the cumulative number of battle-deaths as independent variable and several indicators of human development as dependent variable, including Human Development Index, Maternal Mortality Rate, Infant Mortality Rate and included Official Direct Assistance and Aid as a control variable. The results of the study confirm author’s hypothesis of a negative correlation between battle-deaths and human development, highlighting the potential existence of the point of no return in an armed conflict, after which both the winner and loser will be worse off no matter the conflict result.