Working Group on Anticipatory Action in Conflict

Conflict exacerbates disaster risks in many areas around the world, by heightening exposure to other hazards, undermining coping capacities and structures designed to keep people safe and preventing response and recovery efforts. Impacts on food, water and health systems can additionally lead to greater food insecurity or disease outbreaks, which can become crises in their own right. Anticipatory action is crucial in such settings to protect the lives and livelihoods of those most in need and to avoid further pressure on already burdened disaster response systems and funding.

For anticipatory action to flourish and to be effective in protecting people affected by armed conflict, we need to better understand the multi-risk environments and the complex dynamics that armed conflict generates, which could jeopardize the design and implementation of anticipatory action. Conflict sensitivity is essential for anticipatory action to follow the principles of do no harm and ensure that anticipatory action does not contribute to any existing tensions in a given context.

The Working Group on Anticipatory Action in Conflict brings together practitioners and researchers working on developing further the understanding of how anticipatory action in fragile, conflict-affected and violent contexts, to facilitate the exchange of experiences and integration of knowledge across organizations on how to effectively design and implement anticipatory action in situations of conflict to reach the most vulnerable population.

Please get in contact with the co-leads below for up-to-date information about upcoming meetings. 

Photo by James Morgan – Cox’s Bazar 2019