Annual report

Enabling Functions
| Humanitarian diplomacy 
167

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SPOTLIGHT
WORLD DISASTERS REPORT 2022
By the end of 2022, the COVID-19 pandemic 
had taken a staggering toll on lives, health, and 
the social and economic wellbeing in every 
nation in the world. The crisis caused increased 
unemployment and poverty; increased food 
insecurity; a higher vulnerability to violence; a 
loss of education and reduced opportunities 
for youth, and added stress to public services, 
notably health and social protection services.
The IFRC’s 
World Disasters Report 2022
 
(WDR) 
showed that much of this could have been 
avoided. While COVID-19 was a new virus that 
presented new challenges, there were also count-
less common measures and approaches that 
could have mitigated the pandemic’s impacts.
Notably, governments could have invested 
far more in emergency preparedness at local 
level, in public and community health systems 
and in domestic emergency and disaster 
laws – aspects of the crisis that have not been 
sufficiently addressed in major COVID reports 
and discussions.
The WDR aimed to address this gap, drawing 
on the experience of National Societies and the 
IFRC to call for greater investment in domestic 
and local preparedness systems: preparedness 
to prevent, detect early and respond quickly to 
future outbreaks and other shocks and stresses. 
It emphasized the critical aspects of equity, trust, 
and local action in any effort to address public 
health emergencies, and proposes tangible 
approaches and programmes that help how 
these principles can be translated on the ground.
These include community prevention and pre-
paredness programmes that are sensitive to 
both health and other types of threats; stronger 
community health systems designed with 
communities and run by local actors; flexible, 
transparent and fair global solidarity mecha-
nisms to increase access to pandemic response 
products and build domestic capacities to get 
them where they are most needed; stronger and 
more accessible social protection systems and 
updated, whole-of-society and whole-of-gov-
ernment legal frameworks that foster trust and 
combat inequity.