Restoring reliable data capacity in fragile and conflict-affected situations
By Ankur Nagar
Over the last decade, the number of people living in proximity to conflict, defined as within 60 kilometers of at least 25 conflict-related deaths, has nearly doubled.¹ During this period, the number of forcibly displaced people worldwide has also doubled, exceeding 74 million in 2018. Today, approximately 2 billion people — including half of the world’s poor — live in economies affected by fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCS).²
Poverty trends for economies in FCS and other economies (2000–30)
To tackle this surge of poverty amid fragility and conflict, access to timely and reliable data has become critical to plan and implement evidence-based interventions. However, up-to-date data about poverty levels and living conditions for 71% of people living in fragile and conflict-affected economies, especially for the displaced people, is often limited or nonexistent.¹
About 500 million people live in fragile and conflict-affected economies with no or outdated poverty data.¹
Moreover, in areas affected by violence, poor infrastructure, disease, and other hazards, regular data collection with traditional methods is often impossible for enumerators. The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced further barriers to field data collection and added the risk of situations deteriorating in already fragile contexts.
While innovative technologies, such as mobile phones and remote sensing, make data collection in fragile settings feasible — with greater applicability through the COVID-19 pandemic — resources and capacity for these are scarce for economies in FCS.
This is where the flexible funding and global expertise offered by the Trust Fund for Statistical Capacity Building (TFSCB) has become essential — with US$17.5 million+ provided to projects that address data deprivation across 27 economies in FCS. Here’s a look at some recent examples from TFSCB-funded projects that generate timely data about lives of people affected by conflict, displacement, food insecurity, and poverty.
Monitoring the impact of conflict in Nigeria
For over a decade, Nigeria has suffered the impacts of armed conflict and violence spreading through several regions in the country. In the Northeast, clashes with Boko Haram escalated into a National State of Emergency in 2014.³ In the Niger Delta, increased attacks on oil facilities during 2015–16 contributed to the country’s fall into recession. The recent pastoral conflict in the North Central region is fast emerging as a threat to Nigeria’s food security.
It’s estimated that the ongoing violence has directly affected over 6 million people. The effect on the poor and vulnerable has been severe, as more than 1 million people have been forcibly displaced and another 4 million face food insecurity.³ However, a comprehensive analysis of how conflict impacts households had not been possible, due to the lack of data and difficulties in field data collection from areas plagued by armed conflict.
In 2017, TFSCB funded the Conflict Monitoring System project to enable Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) to set up a phone-survey system to remotely collect high-frequency data from conflict-affected and hard-to-reach areas. The project established an 18-seat, solar-powered call center — and trained NBS staff in questionnaire development, data collection, survey monitoring, data quality control, and call center operations.
According to the first round of phone surveys, about 50% of households in the Northeast region experienced at least one event of conflict or violence against a household member during 2010–17.⁴
Using the call center, the NBS team has already carried out four rounds of phone surveys — covering over 700 households in the Northeast, South, and North Central regions per survey — to assess: (1) Effect of ongoing conflicts on households, (2) Food security in conflict-affected regions, (3) Impact of pastoral conflict on households, and (4) Market access for farmers. The results from the first two rounds were disseminated by the NBS in 2018.
Importantly, data from the phone surveys is informing interventions in Nigeria — for instance the evidence from the first two rounds of phone surveys helped plan a cash transfer component for internally displaced persons in Borno state. Currently, the call center is carrying out the first round of a high-frequency phone survey to inform Nigeria’s COVID-19 response and recovery process. This survey will have 12 rounds over the course of a year.
Scaling a Pastoral Early Warning System in the Sahel
People in Africa’s arid Sahel region are among the world’s most-at-risk to disasters, conflict, and climate change. Over 80% of the population relies on livestock herding and subsistence agriculture, with biomass as the only source of forage for cattle. With only one wet season expected in a year — irregular rainfall, droughts, and land degradation leads to frequent food shortages and conflict. In 2020, UN estimates that over 12 million people across the Sahel region would face acute food insecurity during the dry season.⁸
To predict and mitigate such crises, access to high-frequency data on the availability of biomass and water resources in the Sahel is essential. However, consistent field data collection and analysis for a vast region — with pockets of armed conflict — is difficult and time consuming. To solve this challenge, TFSCB funded the scale up of Action Against Hunger’s Pastoral Early Warning System (PEWS) in the Sahel as part of its Data Innovations program in 2018.⁹
The Pastoral Early Warning System integrates remote sensing data with weekly SMS survey data to monitor biomass, surface water, drought conditions, and pasture availability in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and Senegal.
With the help of the PEWS, governments, UN agencies, and herder organizations can now access up-to-date maps, datasets, reports, and alerts about natural biomass, water resources, and drought conditions in the Sahel. This information is helping target humanitarian interventions and inform decisions such as herders moving livestock during the long dry season.
For instance, herders in Northern Mali can contact a pilot call center for information about water availability, pasture conditions, and market prices. PEWS processes have also been adapted by the National Early Warning System of Mali.¹⁰ In addition, up-to-date maps from the PEWS are available on the GeoSahel website and yearly biomass production data (at 1 kilometer resolution) is shared on the Humanitarian Data Exchange.
Tackling extreme data deprivation in Myanmar
Myanmar is a nation in transition, seeking to break with a past marred by multiple conflicts that persist today, driven by social exclusion and predatory natural resource extraction.⁵ After its first democratic elections in 2015, Myanmar’s gradual transition to democratic governance required timely national statistics.
However, Myanmar’s statistical system had become decentralized and fragmented, and suffered from “extreme data deprivation” due to the lack of household and enterprise surveys.⁶ In 2015, TFSCB initiated the Survey on Household Living Conditions project to enable Myanmar’s Central Statistical Organization (CSO) to produce and analyze quality household surveys.
Estimates from the Myanmar Living Conditions Survey (2017) reveal that 24.8% of the population is poor. Moreover, 87 % of the poor reside in rural areas where access to healthcare and other basic services is limited.⁷
The Myanmar Living Conditions Survey was conducted by the CSO over a period of 12 months from December 2016 to December 2017 in order to capture seasonality. Held across all districts of the country, the survey reached over 8,000 households. Despite the CSO’s efforts, the survey was unable to cover households in 7 areas (out of 1,152 enumeration areas), which were in armed-conflict-affected regions of Northern Shan and Northern Rakhine.⁷
With the help of TFSCB-supported training on statistical software and poverty measurement techniques, CSO staff also gained skills to produce several reports based on the survey — including the Key Indicators Report (2018), the Poverty Report (2019), and the Socio-Economic Report (2020) — which offer a first snapshot of living conditions in Myanmar, and how households in the country compare geographically and have evolved over time.
Restoring statistics in Central African Republic
One of the poorest and most vulnerable countries in the world — ranked 188 out of 189 countries in the Human Development Index — the Central African Republic (CAR) has known political instability since its independence in 1960.¹¹ The latest bout of conflict, which started in 2012, displaced over 25% of the country’s population. Elections in 2016 brought an end to over three years of turmoil.
In 2017, TFSCB funded the Data for Decision Making project to rebuild CAR’s statistical system, which was in ruins after the pillaging of its national statistical institute during the recent conflict. The project is helping CAR to: restore and digitize its statistical archives, collect critical national statistics, share data online in a secure manner, and develop its statistical institutions.¹²
Three years of conflict had left CAR’s statistical system in poor shape. The staff of its statistical institute disappeared, its offices were pillaged, and servers were lost — wiping out much of the country’s statistical memory, including the digital cartography from its last census in 2003.¹²
With the project’s help, CAR produced its first set of National Accounts in 2019. Preparatory work for collecting other essential datasets through Computer-Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI) systems is underway, including for the Household Living Conditions Survey. The project is also using satellite imagery to plan field operations for digital cartography, which will enable the census enumeration planned for 2020.¹³
Meanwhile, to accommodate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, TFSCB has extended its grant closing dates for the project. It has further repurposed some of its funding to help track COVID-19 impacts thorough weekly price monitoring and periodic phone-based household surveys.¹⁴
As the global statistical system gears up to work within the constraints introduced by the COVID-19 pandemic, TFSCB’s flexibility and experience in building data capacity amid fragility and conflict has offered a strong foundation to rapidly initiate data projects across 27 countries. This includes fresh phone survey projects across 7 economies in FCS — Burundi, Chad, Iraq, Myanmar, Niger, Somalia, and South Sudan — to monitor COVID-19 impacts.¹⁵
Do visit the TFSCB website for more best practices and examples from statistical capacity building projects across the globe. TFSCB-III is supported by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), the Government of Korea, and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Ireland.
References
- Corral, Paul, Alexander Irwin, Nandini Krishnan, Daniel Gerszon Mahler, and Tara Vishwanath. 2020. Fragility and Conflict: On the Front Lines of the Fight against Poverty, World Bank.
- Hoogeveen, Johannes; Pape, Utz. 2020. Data Collection in Fragile States : Innovations from Africa and Beyond, World Bank.
- Conflict Monitoring System in Nigeria: Project Information Document, World Bank.
- Conflict and Violence in Nigeria 2017, National Bureau of Statistics, Nigeria.
- Myanmar: Overview, World Bank.
- Survey on Household Living Conditions: Implementation Completion and Results Report, World Bank.
- Poverty Report- Myanmar Living Conditions Survey 2017, World Bank.
- Overview of Humanitarian Needs and Requirements: Sahel Crisis, UNOCHA.
- Trust Fund for Statistical Capacity Building: Annual Progress Report (2019), World Bank.
- How open and free EO data are used for monitoring West-African cattle herders, G-STIC 2018.
- Central African Republic: Overview, World Bank.
- Data for Decision Making : Project Information Document, World Bank.
- Data for Decision Making: Implementation Status & Results Report (September, 2019), World Bank.
- Data for Decision Making: Restructuring Paper, World Bank.
- TFSCB’s rapid support to help countries respond to the COVID-19 outbreak, World Bank.
