Title: Societies at Risk: Anticipating the Impact of Armed Conflict

Time and date: 9 March 2022, 19:00-20:00 CET

Speakers: 

• Håvard Hegre, Dag Hammarskjöld Professor in Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University
• Anneli Eriksson, Research Specialist, Karolinska Institutet
• Samer Jabbour, Professor in Public Health Practice, American University of Beirut
• Joaquin Salido Marcos, Economic Affairs Officer, UN Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States, United Nations
• [Moderator] Paola Vesco, Post-Doctoral Researcher, Uppsala University

Link to event: http://www.worldbank.org/fragilityforum

Description: Armed conflict is human development in reverse. The full scale of conflicts’ impacts remains unknown, however, and fragmentation of research into multiple academic fields limits our understanding. Seeking to bridge this gap, researchers from economics, epidemiology, political science, and conflict research have come together into a multi-disciplinary research project at Uppsala University to study the impacts of armed conflict through a risk-analysis perspective. Treating impact as a function of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability, “Societies at Risk” will consider effects at both the macro and micro level on economies, health, and political institutions at a novel level of detail and comprehensiveness. It will model exposure to conflict events by accounting for how effects of observed, overt violence are transmitted to locations far from the violence itself and over time, identify conditions that make local communities, marginalized groups, and women particularly vulnerable to the effects, and study how conflict increases their vulnerability to shocks such as natural disasters. Results will be coordinated into an early-warning system that expands the well-established ViEWS model, coupled with policy recommendations for parties seeking to reduce the impact on human development.

This roundtable will take its starting point in “Societies at Risk”, inviting renowned contributing researchers from different domains to share their lessons learnt and present their respective approaches to understanding and mitigating compound risks in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. The session will then turn to a hands-on and open discussion with the FCV community on how academia and the international community can work together to prevent and mitigate future conflict impacts, enhance societal resilience, and prepare for compound risks that impede sustainable development.

Participants are strongly encouraged to engage in the discussion, share their own experiences – successes and failures – with the group, and use this opportunity to connect and liaise with other actors in the community.