The UNDP report is based on interviews with hundreds of former combatants in East, West and the Horn of Africa.
A lack of jobs is what drives people to join fast-growing armed groups in sub-Saharan Africa, more so than religious beliefs, according to a United Nations Development Program (UNDP) report based on interviews with hundreds of former combatants.
While deaths worldwide from “terrorism” have fallen in the past five years, those in sub-Saharan Africa have increased, making it a global epicenter of attack, said the UNDP report, citing the annual Global Index survey.
Countries from East to West Africa have seen armed groups take over large swaths of territory, displacing millions of people, eroding faith in democratic government and causing widespread famine.
The Sahel region has been hit the hardest, as groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS) expand their attacks on one of the poorest regions in the world.
The UNDP report found that 25 percent of people who were voluntarily recruited into such groups said they needed money as the main reason for joining, while 22 percent said they wanted to join family and friends, and 17 percent mentioned religious ideas.
At the same time, almost half of respondents said there was a “critical point” that prompted them to join, such as the killing or arrest of a family member by state security forces.
The study is based on interviews with more than 2,000 people in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia and Sudan, UNDP said.
This includes more than 1,000 former combatants who were interviewed in detention facilities, prisons and rehabilitation or community centers, UNDP said. The other 1,000 people were a control group drawn from the same community to allow comparisons between responses given by former recruits and those given by people with the same background.
Education levels among recruits are low, and mistrust of government is high, the report says. An additional year of schooling reduces the likelihood of voluntary recruitment into armed groups by 13 percent, it found.
“The social contract between the state and citizens must be revived to address the root causes of violent extremism,” said UNDP administrator Achim Steiner.
“Security-driven counterterrorism responses are often costly and minimally effective.”
The report recommends greater investment in child welfare, quality education and livelihoods to counter and prevent “violent extremism”, rather than a military approach.
The Global Index is produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace think tank, which draws its data from the database of Dragonfly Tracker, a private sector security and intelligence service.
