Disinformation as a shared emergency: how can local media, peace, humanitarian and development actors improve cooperation?

In crisis and conflict-affected contexts, access to reliable information is essential for people’s protection, safety, health, mobility, access to services and ability to make decisions. Yet misinformation, disinformation and harmful narratives increasingly undermine peace and humanitarian actions, development efforts and peacebuilding outcomes. They can erode trust, fuel tensions, obstruct access to aid and human security, expose communities and aid workers to security risks, and weaken social cohesion. 

This panel will explore harmful information as a shared challenge across the humanitarian–development–peace nexus. It will ask how local media, development/peacebuilding actors and humanitarian organisations can strengthen cooperation to prevent and respond to information-related harms, while preserving peace principles, humanitarian values, journalistic independence and community trust. 

The panel will consider how these risks can be anticipated and prevented, rather than reacting to disinformation and harmful information once they have already spread. We will look at local independent media as actors best placed to understand local information ecosystems, working in local languages, through trusted channels, and with direct knowledge of community concerns, conflict dynamics and social tensions. 

We will discuss their role for countering disinformation, but also for supporting trust, early warning, community resilience and inclusive public dialogue. By bringing together peacebuilding, humanitarian, media, and development perspectives, the session will connect information integrity to media ecosytem’s resilience and peace dividends. It will examine how stronger information ecosystems can reduce operational risks, improve humanitarian response, support access to essential services, and contribute to social cohesion and peace in fragile contexts.