Society, conflict and economy

Armed conflict between states, with direct attacks on people and territory and wide effects on trade, energy and food.

Also: international armed conflict

Armed conflict inside a state between its government and organised armed groups, or among such groups.

Also: civil war, insurgency

Mass protest, riot or looting that disrupts order, services and movement and may turn violent.

Also: riot, mass protest, looting

Deliberate violence against civilians or infrastructure to spread fear and force political change.

Also: terror attack

Violence between or against identity groups, such as ethnic, religious or political communities, including mass killings.

Also: ethnic violence, mass atrocity

Unexploded ordnance and mines left after fighting that kill and maim for decades and block land, roads and return.

Also: unexploded ordnance, landmines

Pollution, burning and destruction of land, water and wildlife caused by hostilities and by war economies.

Also: war pollution, scorched land

Deliberate strikes on power, water, health, transport or communications that cut services to civilians.

Also: strikes on power plants, attacks on hospitals

Blockade or obstruction that cuts a population off from food, fuel, medicine and aid.

Also: blockade, aid obstruction

Large numbers of people forced to leave their homes by conflict, disaster or collapse, straining host areas and services.

Also: forced displacement, refugee movement

A sudden deterioration in access to enough food, from shocks such as drought, conflict or price spikes, with malnutrition and excess deaths.

Also: food emergency

Extreme food deprivation with widespread starvation, acute malnutrition and rising deaths in a population.

Also: mass starvation

Disputes or violence over shared water, land or grazing that disrupt livelihoods and can escalate.

Also: water dispute, grazing conflict

Persistent undernutrition and micronutrient deficiency, seen in stunting and anaemia, that harms child development and productivity long after any acute food crisis.

Also: stunting, undernutrition, hidden hunger

Prolonged loss of schooling from closures, attacks on schools, displacement or teacher shortage, causing learning loss and higher child labour and early marriage.

Also: school closure, learning loss

Fatal crowding at gatherings, religious events, stadiums and transport hubs, where people can neither move nor breathe.

Also: stampede

A sudden rush to buy food, fuel, cash or medicine that empties shelves and strains supply for those who need it most.

A cluster of suicides or self-harm in one community that follows a crisis, a loss or a media event closely in time.

A sudden loss of confidence or liquidity in markets or banks that cuts credit, wealth and employment.

Also: financial crisis, bank run

A government unable to service or refinance its debt, forcing austerity, default or currency stress.

A fast collapse in the value of a currency that drives inflation and import costs.

Also: hyperinflation

A sharp rise or fall in energy, food or metal prices that hits importers, producers or both.

Also: energy price spike, food price spike

Loss of effective state capacity to keep order, run services and enforce rules, which raises the damage of every other hazard.

Also: state fragility, state collapse

Explosive, self-feeding price growth, usually after monetary financing of deficits, that destroys savings, wages and trust in money and pushes people into barter or foreign currency.

Also: runaway inflation, currency debasement

Housing costs rising far beyond incomes, with evictions, overcrowding and homelessness that push people into unsafe dwellings and hazard-prone land.

Also: housing insecurity, eviction wave

Households unable to afford or access enough energy for heating, cooling, cooking and light, raising cold and heat deaths and pushing people to unsafe fuels.

Also: energy insecurity, fuel poverty

Direct armed conflict between the most powerful states or their alliances, with global reach across land, sea, air, space and cyberspace and a standing risk of nuclear escalation.

Also: major-power conflict, systemic war

Use of many nuclear weapons between states, killing people through blast, fire and fallout and wrecking cities, infrastructure, health systems and the world economy.

Also: nuclear exchange, strategic nuclear exchange, Nuclear escalation and nuclear war, nuclear winter, nuclear conflict

Abrupt global cooling, drying and darkening after soot from burning cities is lofted into the stratosphere, causing harvest failure and mass starvation far from the fighting.

Also: nuclear autumn, post-war climate cooling

A confrontation between nuclear-armed states in which threats, alert changes or battlefield events raise the chance of nuclear use through deliberate choice or miscalculation.

Also: nuclear brinkmanship, nuclear crisis

Nuclear use that follows a false warning, technical fault, cyber intrusion or breakdown of command and control rather than a deliberate national decision.

Also: false-alarm launch, unauthorised nuclear use

Spread of nuclear weapons or the means to build them to further states or to non-state actors, widening the set of actors able to cause mass destruction.

Also: nuclear breakout, new nuclear-armed state, Weapons of mass destruction proliferation, nuclear proliferation, arms race, WMD spread

An electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear burst high above the Earth that can damage electronics and grid equipment over a very wide area at once.

Also: nuclear EMP, HEMP, High-altitude nuclear detonation, electromagnetic pulse attack, space nuclear detonation

Shelling, occupation, power loss or staff coercion at a nuclear plant or fuel facility in a war zone, raising the risk of a radioactive release.

Also: fighting at a nuclear plant, attack on nuclear installation

A competitive build-up of weapons, including new delivery systems and autonomous or space-based arms, that shortens decision time and raises incentives to strike first.

Also: destabilising arms race, strategic instability

Expiry, withdrawal or violation of treaties and verification arrangements that limited weapons, removing transparency and constraints that kept rivals from miscalculating.

Also: treaty breakdown, end of verification regimes

State coercion that blends sabotage, proxy forces, cyber operations, disinformation, migration pressure and economic levers while staying below the threshold of open war.

Also: hybrid warfare, grey-zone operations, covert sabotage, Hybrid and grey-zone aggression, grey-zone conflict, infrastructure sabotage

Armed conflict in which outside states arm, fund or fight alongside local parties, prolonging fighting and linking a local war to great-power rivalry.

Also: proxy war, internationalised civil war

Use of naval, air or customs force to stop shipping and flights to or from a state or territory, cutting its trade, energy and food imports.

Also: naval blockade, maritime quarantine, air and sea blockade

Seizure and formal incorporation of another state's territory, displacing or subjugating residents and breaking norms that restrain the use of force.

Also: forcible annexation, border change by force

Prolonged control of a territory by a foreign armed force, bringing repression, displacement, resource extraction and denial of services to the population.

Also: hostile occupation

Sudden seizure of government by the military or another faction outside constitutional rules, often bringing curfews, repression, sanctions and suspended aid.

Also: military takeover, unconstitutional seizure of power

Gradual weakening of elections, courts, media freedom and checks on executive power by those in office, reducing accountability and peaceful ways to resolve conflict.

Also: democratic erosion, executive aggrandisement, authoritarian turn, autocratisation

Entrenchment of unaccountable power so complete, often through surveillance and automated control, that peaceful correction becomes nearly impossible nationally or, in the extreme, worldwide.

Also: entrenched autocracy, permanent regime entrenchment

Takeover of regulators, courts, public companies or ministries by narrow private or political interests that turn public power toward their own gain.

Also: state capture, regulatory capture, State and regulatory capture, constitutional capture, elite capture

Large-scale theft or misuse of public money by officials, or its sudden exposure, draining budgets, collapsing trust and triggering fiscal, banking or political crises.

Also: kleptocracy, major corruption scandal, Systemic corruption, bribery, graft

Loss of the ability of courts, police and law to protect rights, enforce contracts and punish abuse, leaving people exposed to violence, extortion and arbitrary power.

Also: impunity, lawlessness, judicial collapse

Systematic collection and automated analysis of a population's communications, movements and identities by a state, chilling dissent and enabling targeted repression.

Also: surveillance state, pervasive physical-trait monitoring, Mass surveillance and data abuse by the state, physical-trait tracking

Restriction, harassment or persecution of journalists, civil-society groups, opposition and protesters, removing the information and voice needed to spot and correct failures.

Also: crackdown on media, censorship, closing civic space, Closing civic space and repression, political repression

Deliberate government cutting or throttling of internet and mobile services, blocking communication, payments, warnings and reporting during unrest, elections or conflict.

Also: internet blackout, network throttling, Government-ordered internet shutdown, splinternet, network shutdown, connectivity blackout, Government internet shutdown and censorship, online censorship

An election or succession whose result is rejected by major parties or the military, risking violence, parallel governments and paralysis.

Also: electoral crisis, contested succession

Deadlock between branches or parties that halts budgets, appointments or lawmaking, interrupting public services and payments and unsettling markets.

Also: government shutdown, debt-ceiling standoff, fiscal deadlock

Killing or attempted killing of a head of state, candidate or other political figure, which can set off unrest, succession crises or reprisals.

Also: targeted killing of leaders

A region's attempt to leave a state, or the state's disintegration into rival parts, contesting borders, assets, citizenship and the control of armed forces.

Also: state fragmentation, separatist crisis

A state reaching across borders to surveil, threaten, abduct or kill exiles, dissidents and diaspora members, and to coerce their families at home.

Also: persecution of diaspora

Weakening, defunding or deadlock of international bodies and agreements that coordinate security, health, trade, climate and disaster response, leaving shared risks unmanaged.

Also: paralysis of international institutions, withdrawal from treaties

Manipulation, intimidation or violence around elections, through fraud, foreign interference, cyber intrusion or attacks on voters and officials, that corrupts results or triggers unrest.

Also: electoral fraud, election violence, foreign election interference

Lasting loss of public confidence in governments, science, media and warning authorities, so people ignore or resist guidance during emergencies and cooperation breaks down.

Also: trust collapse, loss of trust, legitimacy crisis

Adaptation measures that shift or increase risk, such as sea walls that move flooding elsewhere or irrigation that drains aquifers, locking in future vulnerability.

Also: maladaptive adaptation

Sudden fall in the price of an asset class after a speculative run-up, wiping out wealth and collateral and spreading losses through leveraged holders.

Also: market crash, bubble burst

Sharp fall in house or commercial property prices that leaves borrowers in negative equity, stalls construction and weakens lenders and local budgets.

Also: housing crash, real-estate slump

Abrupt tightening of lending by banks and markets that starves firms and households of credit and deepens any downturn.

Also: lending freeze

A run on funds, lenders or other intermediaries outside the banking safety net, forcing fire sales of assets and seizing up short-term funding markets.

Also: shadow-bank run, fund run, Non-bank financial stress, shadow banking stress, private credit stress

Default or breakdown of a clearing house or settlement system at the hub of markets, so trades cannot be completed and losses jump to many members at once.

Also: clearing-house default, settlement system collapse

Disorderly selling and vanishing liquidity in government bond markets, sharply raising borrowing costs and forcing emergency central bank or fiscal action.

Also: bond market tantrum, gilt-style liquidity spiral

Many highly indebted firms failing at once as rates rise or demand falls, destroying jobs and loading losses onto lenders and investors.

Also: wave of insolvencies, zombie-firm reckoning

Crash of crypto-asset prices or failure of a major trading venue or lender, destroying savings and spilling into banks, payment firms and markets that have become exposed.

Also: crypto crash, exchange collapse, Digital-asset run and collapse, stablecoin depeg

Mass redemption of a privately issued token meant to hold a fixed value, forcing sale of its reserve assets and spreading stress to the markets that hold them.

Also: de-pegging

Insurers and reinsurers pulling cover or pricing it out of reach in high-risk places, leaving homes, firms and mortgages unprotected and shifting losses onto people and governments.

Also: uninsurability, insurer retreat, protection gap widening, Insurance market retreat, insurer withdrawal, hard market

A widening gap between promised retirement income and the assets or contributions to pay for it, forcing benefit cuts, higher taxes or old-age poverty.

Also: pension crisis, underfunded pensions

A sudden revaluation of fossil-fuel and carbon-intensive assets when climate policy, technology or litigation shifts faster than markets expected, inflicting losses on investors and lenders.

Also: stranded-asset shock, carbon bubble, Disorderly low-carbon transition, transition risk, stranded assets

A rapid, broad rise in prices that erodes real wages and savings, hits poor households hardest and forces painful tightening of money and budgets.

Also: cost-of-living crisis, price surge, Inflation and cost-of-living shock, stagflation

High inflation combined with weak or falling output and rising unemployment, leaving policymakers no painless choice and squeezing incomes from both sides.

Also: inflationary stagnation

Falling prices and wages that raise the real burden of debt, delay spending and deepen a slump in a self-reinforcing loop.

Also: debt deflation

A fast rise in interest rates that sharply raises debt service for governments, firms and households and exposes losses on bonds held by lenders.

Also: rate spike, refinancing wall

Abrupt reversal of foreign capital inflows to an economy, forcing sharp cuts in imports and spending and often setting off currency and banking stress.

Also: capital flight, sudden stop, Sudden stop and capital flight, capital outflow

A deep and prolonged fall in a country's output and incomes, with mass job loss, business failure and strain on public finances.

Also: economic depression, output collapse, Economic recession, economic downturn, depression

A simultaneous fall in output across most major economies, shrinking trade, jobs and fiscal room everywhere and limiting help from abroad.

Also: world downturn, synchronised recession

Insolvency or acute budget shortfall in a city, province or local authority that cuts services, delays wages and halts maintenance of infrastructure.

Also: municipal default, city bankruptcy

A sharp fall in money sent home by migrant workers, after job losses or policy changes abroad, cutting household income and foreign currency in dependent economies.

Also: drop in migrant transfers

Abrupt cuts or freezes in international aid and humanitarian funding that halt health, food and relief programmes for populations that depend on them.

Also: donor funding cut, aid cliff

Breakup of the world economy into rival blocs through tariffs, investment screening and industrial policy, raising costs, cutting growth and weakening shared crisis response.

Also: deglobalisation, trade war, tariff escalation, decoupling, economic coercion, bloc fragmentation

Splintering of the global monetary system into competing currencies, payment networks and reserve assets, raising transaction costs and making financial sanctions and crises less predictable.

Also: reserve-currency shift, payment-network splintering

Rapid replacement of human work by robotics and AI systems across many occupations, faster than new jobs appear, cutting incomes and unsettling social contracts.

Also: AI job displacement, technological unemployment, Automation-driven labour displacement

A persistent gap between the skills workers hold and those employers need, leaving vacancies unfilled alongside unemployment and slowing adaptation to new technology.

Also: skills gap

A fast rise in joblessness across an economy after a shock, pushing households into poverty and weakening health, cohesion and public finances.

Also: job-loss shock, mass lay-offs

Too few workers for essential services such as care, health, farming, construction or utilities, because of ageing, emigration or poor conditions, so services fail.

Also: workforce shortage, care worker shortage

Loss of a region's main industry, such as coal, steel or manufacturing, leaving long-term unemployment, outmigration, eroded tax bases and social despair.

Also: deindustrialisation, plant or mine closure, carbon-transition job loss

Coordinated work stoppages across key sectors such as transport, ports, energy or health that halt services and supply for days or weeks.

Also: general strike, national strike wave

Sudden loss of income for workers without contracts, savings or social protection when lockdowns, crackdowns, platform changes or disasters stop their daily earnings.

Also: gig work insecurity, loss of informal livelihoods

A fast rise in the share of older people relative to working-age people, straining pensions, health and care and shrinking the labour force.

Also: demographic ageing, rising dependency ratio, Rapid population ageing and decline, population ageing, depopulation, demographic decline

Sustained birth rates far below the level that replaces each generation, locking in shrinking cohorts, ageing and long-run population decline.

Also: sub-replacement fertility, birth dearth

Sustained loss of residents from a region or town through low births and outmigration, leaving services, infrastructure and land management unviable.

Also: rural depopulation, shrinking cities, population decline

A large cohort of young people entering a labour market that cannot absorb them, raising frustration, migration pressure and recruitment into unrest or armed groups.

Also: youth unemployment crisis, jobless youth

Fast growth of cities beyond planning and services, packing people into informal settlements on hazardous land without safe water, sanitation, drainage or tenure.

Also: informal settlement growth, slum expansion, urban sprawl, Unplanned rapid urbanisation

Displacement that lasts for years without return, integration or resettlement, trapping people in camps or informal settlements with eroding aid, rights and livelihoods.

Also: long-term refugee situation, protracted internal displacement

Large flows of people moving across borders without safe legal routes, exposing them to drowning, desert deaths, smuggling, detention and abuse along the way.

Also: migrant boat disasters, deaths in transit, mixed migration surge

Movement of people away from places made unliveable by sea-level rise, heat, drought or land loss, and the stranding of those too poor to move.

Also: climate migration, planned relocation, trapped populations, Climate-driven displacement and relocation, managed retreat

A state forcibly removing large numbers of people from its territory or a region, often by identity, breaking up families and dumping people into places that cannot receive them.

Also: mass deportation, ethnic cleansing, forced population transfer

Sustained emigration of doctors, nurses, engineers and other skilled people from a country, hollowing out health, education and technical services that the remaining population needs.

Also: skilled emigration, health worker emigration

A large cohort of young people entering labour markets that cannot absorb them, raising frustration, migration pressure and recruitment into unrest or armed groups.

Also: youth unemployment

Lack of health workers, engineers, responders or other critical staff, from emigration, ageing, burnout or underinvestment, so essential services cannot run or surge.

Also: health workforce shortage, brain drain, labour shortage

Deepening division of a society into hostile camps that distrust and dehumanise one another, blocking compromise and making political violence more acceptable.

Also: affective polarisation, us-versus-them politics, polarization, loss of social cohesion

A broad loss of trust in government, science, media and justice that weakens compliance with warnings, public-health advice and the law in a crisis.

Also: legitimacy crisis, loss of public trust

A sharp widening of gaps in income, wealth or access to essentials between groups or places, fuelling grievance, poor health and political instability.

Also: wealth concentration, widening inequality

A surge in attacks, threats and vandalism against people for their identity, often after a trigger event or inflammatory rhetoric, spreading fear across communities.

Also: xenophobic attacks, bias-motivated violence

Systematic speech by leaders, media or online networks that portrays a group as a threat or less than human, preparing the ground for mass violence.

Also: hate speech campaign, dangerous speech

State or dominant-group policy that strips a group of rights, property, movement or citizenship, often through detention or segregation, a recognised precursor of atrocity.

Also: apartheid, mass arbitrary detention, institutionalised discrimination

Killing, starvation, forced sterilisation or other acts carried out to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group in whole or in part.

Also: group destruction

Spread of ideologies and networks that justify violence for political, religious or identity causes, recruiting people toward terrorism or militias.

Also: violent extremism, online radicalisation, Violent extremism and radicalisation, radicalisation, violent extremist recruitment

A rise in sexual, domestic and other gender-based violence during conflict, displacement, lockdown or economic stress, harming survivors' health and safety.

Also: sexual violence in crises, domestic violence surge

Durable criminal networks operating across borders that trade in illicit goods and services, corrupt officials and use violence to protect markets and routes.

Also: cartel, mafia network

Gangs or cartels that control neighbourhoods or regions, tax residents, decide who lives and works there and fight rivals and the state.

Also: gang control, gang violence, extortion rackets

Recruitment and control of people by force, fraud or debt for sexual exploitation, forced labour, forced criminality or organ removal.

Also: modern slavery, forced labour, scam compound captivity, Human trafficking and forced labour

Criminal facilitation of irregular border crossings for profit, often in overcrowded boats or vehicles, exposing people to death, extortion and abuse.

Also: people smuggling

Production and trade in illicit drugs, including potent synthetic ones, that fuels violence and corruption and floods markets with lethal products.

Also: narcotics trade, synthetic drug supply

Diversion and smuggling of firearms, ammunition and explosives to criminals and armed groups, raising the lethality of crime and conflict.

Also: small arms proliferation, weapons smuggling

Movement of criminal, corrupt or untaxed money across borders through shell firms, trade fraud and digital assets, draining public revenue and shielding abuse.

Also: money laundering, sanctions evasion, tax evasion flows, Money laundering and illicit financial flows, terrorist financing

Attacks on ships to steal cargo, take crews hostage or extort ransom, endangering seafarers and raising costs on key shipping routes.

Also: piracy, ship hijacking, maritime crime

Abduction of individuals or groups, including schoolchildren and travellers, for ransom or leverage, terrorising communities and closing schools and roads.

Also: mass abduction

Organised illegal extraction or trade of wildlife, timber, minerals, fish or waste that destroys ecosystems and funds armed groups and corruption.

Also: wildlife trafficking, illegal logging, illegal mining, illegal fishing

Criminal networks controlling territory, markets or officials through violence and corruption, displacing people and disrupting supply, justice and services.

Also: cartel violence, gang violence, criminal networks

Industrial-scale scams and fraud, often using call centres, fake identities and synthetic media, that steal savings and benefits and sometimes rely on trafficked workers.

Also: scam compounds, benefit fraud, investment scams

Intentional demolition or desecration of monuments, places of worship, museums and archives, during war or by regimes, to erase a group's identity.

Also: iconoclasm, cultural cleansing

Theft, illegal excavation and sale of artefacts from sites and collections, stripping them of context and often funding armed groups.

Also: antiquities trafficking, illicit excavation

Damage to historic sites, buildings and landscapes from floods, fire, sea-level rise, erosion, heat and changing moisture that outpaces conservation.

Also: heritage at risk from climate, coastal heritage loss

Disappearance of a language as speakers shift to dominant ones or die out, taking with it oral history, ecological knowledge and identity.

Also: language endangerment, loss of last speakers

Erosion of practices, skills and environmental knowledge held by communities, through displacement, assimilation or ecosystem loss, weakening local adaptation and identity.

Also: intangible heritage loss

Destruction or unrecoverable decay of paper and digital records, through fire, flood, conflict, neglect or format obsolescence, erasing property, identity and historical evidence.

Also: records destruction, digital record loss, digital obsolescence

Visitor numbers beyond what a heritage site or historic town can bear, wearing out fabric, displacing residents and degrading the place being visited.

Also: visitor overload