Fragility and conflict

UN peacekeeper carrying a infant whose family was impacted by flooding in Haiti in 2007

31 January 2020

Addressing disaster risk can help prevent crises in Asia-Pacific

The Laos dam collapse, the massive flooding in Iran last year, and the quarter of a million people displaced by drought in Afghanistan. These might seem like isolated events, but they all have one thing in common; they are disasters that could have been prevented. Prevention is at the core of disaster risk reduction, which aims to help communities and countries address underlying risk factors and build resilience.

Updates

12 December 2019

Integrating disaster risk reduction into humanitarian action in Asia-Pacific

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) organized a regional workshop to identify entry points for enhanced integration of DRR into humanitarian programming in both recurrent and protracted crisis settings.

Prakash Javadekar, India’s Minister for Environment and Climate Change (centre), Matthew Rycroft, permanent Secretary for the UK Department for International Development (left) and Mami Mizutori, Head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction at the coalition event in New York.

Updates

25 September 2019

Member states declare support for Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure

The UK, Japan and Bhutan announced that they have joined the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure, following its launch this week by the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi.

Visual representation of cascading risk (c)UNDRR/James Brown, GAR2019

Updates

5 July 2019

New tool helps withstand hybrid and cascading risk scenarios

The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE) and the Ministry of the Interior for Finland have joined together to develop a new stress test tool that will help countries understand and improve their ability to reduce risk of hybrid threats and cascading disaster scenarios.

Documents and publications

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction as a vehicle for conflict prevention: Attainable or tenuous?

This paper contributes to the growing debate about the potential alignment, synergies, and shared ambitions between DRR and conflict prevention, but also points to counter arguments that DRR does not or could not influence conflict dynamics

Documents and publications

Disaster risk reduction in contexts of fragility and armed conflict: a review of emerging evidence challenges assumptions

This paper argues that DRR frameworks and policies require a more nuanced and flexible approach when dealing with ‘the state’. State-centred frameworks, including the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, give ‘primary responsibility’ to the state

Documents and publications

Urban disaster risk reduction strategy in fragile contexts: a case from Kabul, Afghanistan

A long-lasting conflict and recurrent disasters in the cities have kept the county underdeveloped in Afghanistan. Rapid urbanisation and climate change would put more challenges to urban communities. In order to achieve Sustainable Development Goals in

Documents and publications

Disaster risk governance and humanitarian aid in different conflict scenarios

In the different academic research fields of disaster, humanitarian aid, or conflict, little attention has been paid to the nexus between disaster and conflict. Academic attention to conflict and disaster has been disjointed, raising different questions