Conflict Management and Disaster Risk Reduction: A case study of Kenya

The literature and the practice of disaster risk reduction tend to be overwhelmingly concerned with the prevention, mitigation, and reduction of risk of natural hazards. Yet at the local community level, people face the risk of both natural disasters and man-made crises, and they recognize both kinds of risk. In terms of policy and practice, dealing with these two categories of hazards is often rather separate. In institutional terms, both national governments and various international and non-governmental agencies often attempt to address both sets of concerns— conflict and natural disasters—but often in very separate ways. And much of the emphasis on conflict is not necessarily on risk reduction, but rather on responding to conflict once it has erupted, or on recovery (and in many cases, on stepped-up law enforcement). Prevention or mitigation of conflict has not received the attention that prevention or mitigation of a “natural” disasters has.