Lucile Laugerette (ENS Lyon)

Dear Brothers and Sisters: Pope’s Speeches and the Dynamics of Conflict in Africa

Lucile Laugerette
ENS de Lyon

Coauteurs : Mathieu Couttenier (ENS de Lyon, CEPR), Sophie Hatte (ENS de Lyon) et Tommaso Sonno (University of Bologna, CEP-LSE)

Résumé

Conflicts remain widespread with devastating consequences, making peacekeeping and peacebuilding all the more necessary. International speeches play a crucial role in peacebuilding by raising awareness, promoting dialogue and understanding, calling for action, and setting a tone for peace through the emphasis on dialogue, compromise, and reconciliation. In this paper, we focus on the role of the Pope's speeches on conflict in Africa since 1997 and examine to what extent a speech from Vatican explicitly mentioning the conflict situation in a country can affect the dynamics of violence. Specifically, using data on conflict events across all African countries from 1997 to 2022 at a fine spatial resolution, we observe on average a reduction in violence the weeks following the speech, with a sizeable difference across Popes.