Introduction
At the Fall 2015 meeting of the Consultative Group of the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) (Berlin, 28-29 October, 2015), the GFDRR Secretariat was asked to prepare a discussion paper on the nexus between natural disasters, conflict and fragility in order to guide GFDRR activities in the future. This version of the paper is jointly sponsored by the GFDRR and the Government of Germany.
This discussion paper is timely for three reasons:
1) Increasingly complex crises – The current global context is one in which the international community faces an era of unprecedented multiplicity and complexity of crises. These include natural disasters, climate change, rapid environmental degradation, pandemics, armed conflict and intensification of violence, forced displacement, irregular migration, trafficking in persons, radicalization, and terrorism. Key facts and projections borne out by recent research on the links between disasters, fragility and conflict, as well as other threats such as climate change and forced displacement are detailed in the paper as well. For instance, between 2005 and 2009, more than 50 percent of people affected by disasters lived in fragile and conflict-affected states; in some years this reached 80 percent (ODI, 2013b).
2) Mobilizing for Agenda 2030 – The international community is collectively reaffirming its global commitments to international development, peace and security. It is also rethinking the roles and structures of the peace and security, humanitarian and development architecture through a number of high-level processes as outlined later in the report.
3) The Disaster-Crisis/Conflict Overlap – As an example of this overlap, the GFDRR has since its inception been working in fragile countries affected by or vulnerable to disasters and has mobilized significant investments in countries such as Haiti, Yemen, Togo, Somalia and Afghanistan. Over the past two years, there been a dramatic increase in demand for GFDRR’s risk and post-disaster needs assessment (PDNA) methodologies to be applied to conflict contexts, including Syria, Iraq, Gaza, Nigeria, Ukraine, and Yemen.
The Challenge for the International Community
The current international humanitarian and development architecture presents multiple and overlapping risks and complexity. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity for development and humanitarian partners to think more strategically and innovatively about their future engagement in fragile and conflict countries. The World Bank, the United Nations and other global partners increasingly recognize the value of this context, and the need for stakeholders and institutions at all levels to address interrelated and mutually reinforcing risks and to effectively respond to crises together.
A core finding emerging from the past decade of research on the interface is that there is a need to reduce disaster risk including in fragile and conflict-affected states. There is growing evidence from the field that people and institutions in fragile and conflict-affected states are much more vulnerable to natural hazards. Thus, for the international community to most effectively address vulnerability to disasters, it must consider fragility and conflict as core drivers of vulnerability for many millions of the world’s poorest people.
Going forward and by drawing on its existing strengths, development and humanitarian partners would need to consider the following questions:
How can the international community better understand the multi-dimensional nature of risk and crises?
How international partners integrate the implications of this analysis for their own, strategies and approaches?
How can strategic partnerships be strengthened in future engagements in fragile and conflict countries?
This paper provides an analysis on current thinking about the intersections between natural disasters, conflict, fragility, forced displacement and other crises in order to respond to these questions.