ODI High-level Breakfast - When disasters and conflict collide

ODI High-level Breakfast - When disasters and conflict collide

Thursday 16 May 2019; from 07.15 to 07.45 (breakfast from 06.45 am)

Hotel Intercontinental, Room Benelux

SPECIAL REMARKS (10 min)

Check upon delivery

Good morning excellencies; Mr Barthle, ladies and gentlemen. It is good to see so many of you in the room this morning for the launch of the report “When disasters and conflicts collide”. We are very pleased that this is happening on the sidelines of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction.

I especially thank ODI and the Government of Germany for their leadership in unpacking the interplay between fragility, conflict, disaster risk and climate change. It is a clarion call to us all to reflect on what we can do together to reduce risks in conflict-affected and fragile states.

The links between disasters, climate change, fragility and conflict are becoming increasingly visible. Many countries experience both conflict and disasters at the same time. The interaction between the two further increases vulnerabilities and inequality.
And whilst vulnerability is not a function of poverty alone, disasters magnify existing social inequalities and further disadvantage those who are already vulnerable.

We must also acknowledge that not all of us have the same opportunity to make positive choices. Location, age, gender, income group and access to social protection schemes greatly affect the choices people have to anticipate, prevent and mitigate risks. This is particularly evident in conflict-affected countries, where early findings from national reporting point to a two-way relationship in the occurrence, exposure and exacerbated vulnerabilities induced by the interplay between disasters and conflict.

Disasters may exacerbate conflict by placing additional stressors on fatigued governance systems and fueling divides. Similarly, grievances determining the shape and duration of a conflict may be deepened by disasters, intensifying existing imbalances.

Disasters and armed conflict tear away at the basis of sustainable societies and communities. They destroy critical infrastructure and undermine human health and security. And researchers increasingly highlight the cascading effects of disasters and the spillover effects they can have. For example, research has linked the consequences of droughts – that is food insecurity- to the political uprising in the Arab Spring.

The visible face of the link between risk and conflict is most evident in displacement. Climate-related extreme weather events, or slow-onset hazards such as droughts, are a major cause of forced displacement. Forced displacement in itself is a palpable risk, as it forces people to migrate to or through vulnerable environments. For example, the Rohingya refugees, who have settled in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh, are dangerously exposed to extreme weather and natural hazard risk.

I think we can agree that we need to make better informed, and better-timed decisions around risk. Historically, research on disasters in fragile and conflict conditions has focused on the humanitarian responses provided. However, in order to meet the objectives of the Sendai Framework and to increase the resilience of societies at risk, the international community should review how to effectively adapt preventive disaster risk reduction strategies in fragile or conflict-ridden contexts.

On this background, the new research by ODI that we are discussing today, ‘When disasters and conflict collide: a call to action’, is very timely in its contribution towards countries’ efforts to implement the Sendai Framework, SDGs and Paris Climate Agreement.

This report comes at a critical time. Our planet is changing. Climate change is happening faster and more severely than we anticipated, resulting in a series of catastrophic events hitting the most vulnerable communities across the globe. When these settings are added to a context of conflict and political instability, it creates a breeding ground for crisis and slow-onset disasters.

This week, here at the Global Platform, we look at the status of the implementation of the Sendai Framework with special emphasis on the 2020 Target (e) - to substantially increase the number of countries with national and local disaster risk reduction strategies by 2020.

And though we see progress, there is a clear call for more comprehensive DRR strategies across scales, linking DRR, climate change, development and related financing strategies and plans. Importantly, these strategies must be designed in ways that genuinely internalize the full socio-economic contexts in a country, and this should include the complexity of conflict and fragile situations.

With our partners, we are also supporting countries generating and collecting data on damage and loss from disasters in countries facing conflict fragility and violence. For example, in Ethiopia, Niger and Kenya the disaster loss database systems now include conflicts as disasters and other countries have also shown interest in expanding on this.

To tackle the issue of data, information and evidence, yesterday we launched the Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk – GAR2019, which aims to improve availability, accessibility, reliability and timeliness of data for effective risk reduction across all sectors.

People have the right to safety and security, and it is our joint obligation to ensure that the most vulnerable populations, including those who live in settings of conflict and fragility are not left behind. Therefore, investment in disaster risk reduction in conflict-affected contexts is critical, in order to meet the global targets set out by the Sendai Framework, the Paris Agreement and the SDGs.

Let me therefore again reiterate our appreciation of the leadership of Germany and ODI in this area and your efforts to bring in others as in today’s breakfast, to tackle the challenge.

In closing, I would like to share some powerful words from a poem called ‘Home’ by the Somali Poet Warsan Shire, who was displaced by conflict as a child:

I want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark
Home is the barrel of a gun
And no one would leave home
Unless home chased you to the shore
Unless home tells you to
Leave what you could not behind
Even if it was human

No one leaves home
until home Is a damp voice in your ear saying
Leave, run now, I don’t know what
I’ve become.

It is my clear hope that through risk reduction and building resilience, including in the most fragile situations, there is no cause for any poet to ever have to recount a situation like this again.

END