Assessing vulnerability to prevent crises
July 15, 2024
↪ To develop and expand research on vulnerability indicators.
↪ To support the inclusion of vulnerabilities in international development financing.
↪ To advocate for the joint consideration of security issues and economic development issues
↪ FERDI is involved in international discussions on the multidimensional vulnerability index and is continuing its work on vulnerability and resilience.
↪ A vulnerability and resilience observatory is being established, with a website set to launch by the end of 2024.
↪ Under their partnership, FERDI supports the WAEMU Commission in monitoring the vulnerability of member countries.
↪ Following the Interministerial Committee for International Cooperation and Development (CICID) meeting in July 2023, FERDI assisted the French government in developing a method to identify particularly vulnerable priority countries, in addition to the initially selected 45 LDCs. The method proposed by FERDI allows the government to transparently articulate the political decisions for which it is responsible.
↪ The multidimensional vulnerability index was discussed at COP28.
FERDI has long been involved in designing vulnerability indices likely to be used effectively. Since the early 2000s, when it helped introduce an index as a criterion for identifying LDCs, FERDI has published numerous works on the subject. This led to FERDI’s participation in developing the Commonwealth Universal Vulnerability Index and then writing the report Possible Development and Uses of Multidimensional Vulnerability Indices with OHRLLS.
When a high-level panel was tasked with producing such an index, two FERDI experts, Laurent Wagner and Sosso Feindounou, collaborated with UN-OHRLLS and UNDESA to draft the panel's report, presented in October 2023 and finalized in early 2024. Concurrently, FERDI supported this work with a series of notes (Guillaumont, 2023). The debate on how the index would be endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly is ongoing. FERDI insists that the UN should recommend using an index that adheres to the panel's principles, without necessarily endorsing the precise composition of the proposed MVI. The principles to be respected concern multidimensionality (economic, climate and societal), universality (applicable to all developing countries) and exogeneity (independent of countries' current policies). The goal is for financial institutions to use an index that respects these principles when allocating concessional funds, adapting it if necessary.
To leverage its experience and provide clear, rigorous information on vulnerability, FERDI is developing a revised MVI to be incorporated into an observatory on vulnerability and resilience, published annually.
To read: Guillaumont P. (2023) Towards a Multidimensional Vulnerability Index Six supporting notes, FERDI, 38 p.
