Anticipatory action (AA) involves “acting ahead of predicted hazardous events to prevent or reduce acute humanitarian impacts before they fully unfold.” As noted in 2024 by the Grand Bargain political caucus to scale up anticipatory action, AA “saves lives and livelihoods before a humanitarian disaster has occurred, helps to preserve people’s dignity, provides value for money, and protects development gains.”

In contrast to natural disasters, methodological challenges in predicting human-driven conflict present challenges for AA in conflict affected settings. Insecurity Insight has sought to overcome this by focussing on the foreseeable consequences of conflict instead of predicting the occurrence of conflict events themselves. This overall approach is outlined in Insecurity Insight’s discussion paper: An Anticipatory Mindset: Security Risk Management and Communication Perspectives in Anticipatory Action to Enable Humanitarian Access during Conflict.

Additionally, building on our conflict and hunger project, Insecurity Insight has developed a series of region-specific briefings focussed on the application of an anticipatory mindset to conflict-driven food insecurity in Mali. This involves proactively monitoring violent events that pose risks for food security so that their worst foreseeable consequences can be mitigated or prevented through early conflict-sensitive actions. The briefings are available below in English and French.