Building Resilience in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Contexts

THE CHALLENGE

I began my career as a disaster risk reduction documentation officer with Concern Worldwide, working in countries from Afghanistan to Niger. Around two billion people live in fragile, conflict, and violence-affected contexts, where states often cannot deliver essential services and the humanitarian system struggles to produce durable change. In these settings, disasters push already-precarious communities deeper into poverty and vulnerability.

THE APPROACH

- Fieldwork in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Sierra Leone, and Niger with Concern Worldwide

- Case studies with GOAL on food system resilience in Syria, community early warning systems in Honduras, and waste management in Sierra Leone

- Review of disaster risk governance and government–civil society cooperation in Freetown, Monrovia, and Dar es Salaam

- Social network analysis of disaster risk reduction policy and implementation networks

- Analysis of how the Sendai Framework applies in fragile and conflict-affected contexts

THE OUTCOME

Practical tools, strategies, and policy guidance for building resilience in fragile settings including coproduced early warning approaches, resilience frameworks, and a webinar series for practitioners

Further reading

Delivering the Promise of Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Contexts (FCAC): A Case Study of the NGO GOAL’s Response to the Syria Conflict Progress in Disaster Science

Informality, violence, and disaster risks: Coproducing flood and landslide early warning systems with communities in informal and precarious urban settlements in Honduras Frontiers in Climate

Hybrid governance of disaster management in Freetown, Monrovia, and Dar es Salaam Disasters

Disaster risk reduction is not ‘everyone's business’: Evidence from three countries International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction

Four strategies to reduce disaster risk in fragile and conflict affected contexts UNDRR Expert Voices