The Effect of Armed Conflict on Modern Contraception Utilisation – the Case of Colombia

Abstract: 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 cross-sectional 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.