The 2026 World Disasters Report of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) focuses on the concept of harmful information. How should we define this concept, and why is it the central theme of this document?
Charlotte Lindsey Curtet: Harmful information is information that is likely to harm a person or entity. The theme responds to the wish of the IFRC and its societies to better understand the direct consequences of this type of information on the health, security and dignity of people experiencing catastrophe or armed conflict. Around sixty organisations, most of them aid organisations, contributed to the report. All of them observed that harmful information affects their ability to help populations across the areas in which we operate. However, there is not much documentation on this type of information. The report suggests that we improve the way in which we document harmful information in order to create a quantitative and qualitative database. This should make it possible to measure its spread as well as its physical and mental impact through a process of systematic collection across all media platforms: social media, of course, but also newspapers, radio and television, because harmful information is everywhere. Nowadays, it is also spread by word of mouth, and increasingly over encrypted electronic messaging platforms where thousands of people belong to private groups, which makes it difficult to measure the extent of the harm caused by such information.
Charlotte Lindsey Curtet is the editor-in-chief and author of the 2026 World Disasters Report published by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. She elaborates on the link this report establishes between Truth, Trust and Humanitarian Action in the Age of Harmful Information.
Could you give us a few examples?
The floods that occurred on 29th and 30th October 2024 in Valencia are a case in point. The Spanish Red Cross documented more than 80,000 messages posted on social networks over the following days that attempted to discredit it. These included disinformation claiming that the Red Cross was not present in the area, and xenophobic accusations claiming that it favoured Ukrainian, Palestinian or migrant victims over the Spanish people. This disinformation did not directly obstruct aid work, but it did have an impact, as extra work was necessary to counter it. It also gave rise to a form of demoralisation within the population by challenging people’s trust in the Red Cross.
In South Sudan, where the situation remains critical, the report cites two incidents. In the capital city of Juba, rumours were spread claiming that food distributed by international aid organisations was poisoned. This led to aggression against aid workers and resulted in a drop in the number of people receiving food. The Canadian NGO The Sentinel Project worked with radio stations and high-profile locals to reassure inhabitants and re-establish trust in aid organisations. In Lainya County, rumours announcing that armed groups were approaching villages caused a panic, population movement and the suspension of aid. However, when community ambassadors arrived in the area, they were able to prove that the information was false and to refute it over the radio and via group text messages.
In 2025, the Red Crescent Society of Kyrgyzstan held an information and training campaign to promote preventive vaccination in communities. Anti-vaccine sentiment during the Covid-19 pandemic gave rise to a general distrust of vaccines, including routine childhood jabs. This led to a marked increase in vaccine refusals and contributed to the outbreak of a measles epidemic in Kyrgyzstan between 2023 and 2025. To counter this rumour and its consequences, the Red Crescent Society of Kyrgyzstan trained 337 religious leaders to enable them to encourage immunization within their communities by combining evidence-based health information and religious interpretations. Lastly, in autumn 2024, the arrival of Hurricane Helene in the south-western US was accompanied by a surge of disinformation claiming that the American Red Cross was not present in the area, or that it was confiscating donated items. The American Red Cross responded with a clear statement to set the record straight, as well as social media messages stating that disinformation obstructs aid efforts.
“In the end, [affected] populations
are the main victims
of the rise of
harmful information“
How do you explain the generalised spread of harmful information in areas experiencing crisis over the last few years?
There are many different sources of harmful information, including governments, influencers and individuals. However, they all share a common goal in spreading it: to weaken trust in institutions, whether governmental, media or humanitarian. This effect is apparent in the 16-point rise, in 2021–2025, in the proportion of people who believe that institutions deliberately lie to people, according to the Edelman Trust Barometer. The motivations behind the spread of harmful information can be summed up by the acronym MICE (Money, Ideology, Compromise, Ego), often used in the intelligence and security sectors to explain how individuals can be induced to commit harmful acts. This acronym refers to individual interests that have a negative impact on aid organisations, which, on the contrary, work for the public interest. Aid organisations are having to allocate resources to counter disinformation, and are seeing their ability to act affected by the mistrust of vulnerable populations. In the end, these very populations are the main victims of the rise of harmful information.
“Governments, digital platforms,
aid organisations and
affected communities must
work together to rebuild
an information environment
that encourages trust“
What are the report’s main recommendations for protecting these populations in a context dominated by harmful information?
There are multiple recommendations: governments, digital platforms, aid organisations and affected communities must work together to rebuild an information environment that encourages trust and favours aid work. In crisis situations, authorities must adopt a transparent and precise communication strategy. Digital platforms must prioritise essential information in order to assist populations. Aid organisations must be proactive, and not merely reactive: they must work with local partners to strengthen their delivery of factual, reassuring information to populations. Lastly, local communities should not hesitate to communicate with aid organisations.
Trust is built by constant commitment to populations over the long term, and cannot simply be decreed in the middle of a crisis. Today, communication is often a means of reacting to a crisis, but it should, on the contrary, become a key tool in crisis prevention. All the stakeholders can commit to building an environment of information resilience in which reliable information is accessible to those who need it.
This piece is taken from the 17th issue of Mediation, ‘Information: a humanitarian defence against hybrid warfare’, which you’ll find attached at the top of this article or here.