By: Rebecca Yakubu Akatue (PhD)
Introduction
Within conflict and security studies, the analysis of national disaster landscapes proceeds from a foundational premise: disasters constitute security threats prior to their manifestation as humanitarian crises. In both their immediate and cascading effects, disasters generate systemic shocks that undermine state capacity, disrupt governance, and erode public trust. They induce forced displacement, public health crises, and institutional strain, while simultaneously producing governance vacuums that may be exploited by illicit networks, violent non-state actors, and extremist organisations for recruitment, expansion, or strategic advantage.
Whether precipitated by natural hazards, technological failures, or human-induced events, disasters systematically weaken community resilience and intensify pre-existing socio-economic vulnerabilities. Their implications therefore extend beyond humanitarian concern, directly affecting state stability and the broader security environment.
For example, recurrent seasonal flooding, such as the severe event of 29 June, extends beyond immediate disruption of livelihoods to affect public confidence in state institutions. While some hazards are predictable and cyclical, and others occur as sudden exogenous shocks, both categories expose persistent deficiencies in preparedness, emergency response, and post-disaster recovery systems. Over time, these deficiencies accumulate into institutional fragility and contribute to the erosion of state legitimacy. The societal cost of disasters is thus measured not only in mortality and material loss, but also in declining institutional trust and weakened governance capacity.
For analytical purposes, Ghana’s disaster profile may be categorised into three broad typologies. The first comprises predictable hydrological hazards, including floods, droughts, and coastal erosion. The second consists of less predictable but recurrent technological and human-induced disasters, such as stadium stampedes, industrial fires and explosions, and aviation accidents. The third category, often insufficiently theorised in disaster literature, encompasses internal conflict.
Communal violence in the Savannah Region has recurrently generated population displacement, both internally and across the border into Côte d’Ivoire. Similarly, the protracted conflict in Bawku in the Upper East Region, ongoing since the 1980s and significantly intensified between 2022 and 2025, has resulted in over one hundred fatalities and the displacement of thousands of persons. These events extend beyond conventional security incidents and constitute disaster-induced displacement. Affected populations are compelled to abandon homes, agricultural livelihoods, economic activities, and social networks, often becoming dependent on state or humanitarian assistance. In such contexts, sustained instability generates conditions conducive to exploitation by armed groups and organised criminal networks.
Empirical evidence across Ghana indicates a convergence of hazard typologies. The Accra Sports Stadium disaster of 9 May 2001 resulted in 126 fatalities, with surviving dependants continuing to rely on external assistance more than two decades later. The combined flood and fire disaster at Kwame Nkrumah Circle on 3 June 2015 affected approximately 53,000 persons, resulted in about 150 deaths, and generated estimated economic losses of US$160 million. Despite cumulative investments exceeding US$650 million in the Greater Accra Resilient and Integrated Development (GARID) drainage programme since 2015, significant flooding persists in areas such as Kaneshie, Kwame Nkrumah Circle, Odawna, and Weija during the 2026 rainy season. More recently, the military helicopter crash of 6 August 2025 resulted in eight fatalities, including two cabinet ministers, with post-disaster support for affected families largely dependent on voluntary public and corporate contributions.
Across hydrological hazards, technological disasters, structural failures, aviation accidents, and conflict-induced displacement, three patterns are consistently observable. First, these events result in substantial loss of life and large-scale displacement. Second, compensation mechanisms are rarely statutory, with financial assistance largely ad hoc and mobilised ex post. Third, recovery processes are frequently confined to short-term relief, with limited institutionalisation of long-term rehabilitation and resilience-building measures. Consequently, even decades after major disasters, including the 2001 stadium disaster, the 2015 flood-fire event, and the 2025 helicopter crash, affected populations often remain in prolonged legal, financial, and socio-economic precarity. In displacement contexts, such prolonged neglect further exacerbates vulnerability to exploitation and insecurity.
Against this backdrop, this article reframes Ghana’s disaster discourse through the intersecting lenses of national security and disaster risk financing. The central argument is not that Ghana lacks disaster management policies or institutional arrangements, but rather that it lacks a financing architecture capable of converting disaster losses into enforceable legal and fiscal obligations. Flood risk constitutes only one dimension of the national disaster profile; technological hazards, aviation accidents, structural failures, and conflict-induced displacement present equally significant fiscal and security implications. Accordingly, a disaster risk financing strategy that prioritises drainage infrastructure while neglecting this broader hazard spectrum risks reproducing delayed compensation mechanisms, prolonged displacement, and structural vulnerabilities that may be exploited by destabilising actors.
UNDP’s Disaster Risk Finance Framework: Diagnostic Breadth, Fiscal Absence
The Disaster Risk Finance Strategy and Action Plan 2025–2030, jointly developed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Ghana and the Ministry of Finance, represents Ghana’s first comprehensive attempt to institutionalise ex-ante financing for disaster risks. The framework marks an important departure from the country’s traditional reliance on reactive disaster financing by recognising that hydrometeorological, technological, and infrastructural hazards are recurrent, measurable, and therefore amenable to financial planning.
Notwithstanding this important policy shift, a critical assessment reveals a fundamental disconnect between the framework’s diagnostic sophistication and its proposed financing mechanisms. While the document presents a comprehensive assessment of disaster risks, it stops short of establishing the fiscal architecture required to translate policy intent into operational preparedness.
1. Epistemic Breadth Versus Instrumental Absence
The framework identifies Ghana’s disaster risks comprehensively but does not establish the financial instruments required to address them.
The framework’s risk taxonomy is analytically robust. It identifies floods, droughts, fires, and broader systemic hazards as major national risks, reflecting Ghana’s increasingly complex disaster profile. The Accra Sports Stadium disaster of 9 May 2001, which claimed 126 lives, and the twin flood-fire disaster at Kwame Nkrumah Circle on 3 June 2015, which resulted in approximately 150 fatalities, illustrate the diverse hazard environment the framework seeks to address.
However, diagnostic breadth is not matched by fiscal commitment. The strategy does not establish a statutory, ring-fenced, and pre-capitalised disaster financing mechanism capable of providing immediate compensation and recovery support following major disasters. Instead, implementation remains contingent upon “securing technical support and funding” from development partners.
This dependency effectively reproduces the reactive financing model that has historically constrained disaster recovery in Ghana. The May 9 Disaster Relief Fund and the June 3 Disaster Fund were both established only after catastrophic events had occurred and relied heavily on discretionary government appropriations and voluntary public contributions. Predictably, compensation was delayed, rehabilitation remained incomplete, and many affected households continued to experience prolonged economic hardship.
2. Donor Dependency and Temporal Fragility
The framework’s reliance on external financial support introduces significant temporal uncertainty. Disaster recovery requires immediate access to financial resources; yet funding mechanisms dependent on donor mobilisation and post-disaster appropriations inevitably delay assistance when it is needed most.
The June 3 disaster illustrates this structural weakness. More than a decade after the tragedy, affected victims continue to pursue approximately GH¢40 million in compensation through prolonged legal proceedings, demonstrating how delayed financing can prolong recovery and undermine public confidence in state institutions.
International experience provides an instructive comparison. Mexico’s Natural Disaster Fund (FONDEN), established in 1996, initially operated as a conventional budgetary allocation whose unspent resources reverted annually to the national treasury. This arrangement prevented the accumulation of financial reserves and limited disaster preparedness. Reforms introduced in 1999 transformed FONDEN into a dedicated trust fund, enabling resources to accumulate over time and ensuring immediate financial availability following disasters.
In its current form, Ghana’s Disaster Risk Finance Strategy resembles Mexico’s earlier model: it provides a comprehensive policy framework but lacks the permanent fiscal vehicle necessary to guarantee sustained financial readiness.
3. Normative Gaps in Victim-Centred Protection
While the framework appropriately emphasises risk modelling, data systems, catastrophe risk analysis, and parametric insurance, it provides limited guidance on the rights and entitlements of disaster victims. Specifically, it does not establish legally enforceable standards governing compensation timelines, minimum benefit levels, or mandatory disbursement procedures.
International practice demonstrates that disaster financing is most effective when supported by statutory obligations. India’s State Disaster Response Fund and National Disaster Response Fund operate under Finance Commission-mandated contribution arrangements, with the central government contributing between 75 and 90 per cent of the required funding. These institutional arrangements ensure predictability in both resource mobilisation and compensation.
The absence of comparable statutory provisions within Ghana’s framework perpetuates the country’s longstanding reliance on reactive financing. Following the military helicopter crash of 6 August 2025, which claimed eight lives, including senior government officials, the Government established a Children’s Support Fund financed primarily through voluntary corporate and public donations. Although commendable as an emergency response, this approach illustrates the continued dependence on charitable contributions rather than legally guaranteed compensation mechanisms.
The Disaster Risk Finance Strategy provides Ghana with a credible analytical foundation for strengthening disaster risk financing. Its assessment of the country’s hazard landscape is comprehensive and methodologically sound. However, diagnostic sophistication alone cannot guarantee resilience. Without a statutory, pre-capitalised, and ring-fenced financing mechanism, the framework remains largely aspirational rather than operational. Ghana’s experience following the May 9 Stadium Disaster, the June 3 flood-fire disaster, and the August 2025 military helicopter crash demonstrates that effective disaster governance depends not only on identifying risks but also on ensuring that financial resources are legally secured before disasters occur. Against this backdrop, the proposed NADMO Bill 2026 warrants critical examination to determine whether it addresses this fiscal and institutional deficit or merely perpetuates Ghana’s longstanding reliance on reactive disaster financing.
NADMO Bill 2026: Institutional Reform Without Fiscal Preparedness
The proposed NADMO Bill 2026 represents an important step towards strengthening Ghana’s disaster management architecture. The Bill seeks to improve institutional coordination, clarify operational responsibilities, and enhance early warning and emergency response systems. These reforms are both necessary and commendable. However, from a disaster risk financing perspective, the Bill leaves a critical institutional gap unresolved. While it strengthens the governance framework for disaster management, it does not establish the financial architecture required to ensure timely victim compensation and long-term recovery.
Most significantly, the Bill does not create a statutory, pre-capitalised disaster fund capable of financing immediate response, compensation, and rehabilitation across the full spectrum of disaster risks. Instead, it continues to rely primarily on annual budgetary allocations and discretionary releases following the occurrence of disasters. Consequently, disaster financing remains reactive rather than anticipatory.
The implications of this financing model are evident in Ghana’s recent disaster experience. Victims of the May 9 Stadium Disaster, the June 3 flood-fire disaster, and the August 2025 military helicopter crash all depended on post-disaster appropriations, public appeals, or philanthropic contributions before receiving assistance. Under the current legislative approach, affected populations must continue to wait for parliamentary appropriations, Ministry of Finance releases, and administrative disbursement processes before meaningful support becomes available. Such delays undermine recovery, prolong economic hardship, and increase long-term dependence.
The Bill also reflects a relatively narrow conception of disaster risk. Although it addresses floods and infrastructural failures in considerable detail, technological hazards, aviation accidents, structural failures, and conflict-induced displacement receive comparatively limited attention. This imbalance has important fiscal implications. Hazards that are inadequately recognised within legislation are less likely to receive dedicated financing, reducing the state’s capacity to provide timely compensation and sustained recovery support for affected populations.
An effective disaster financing framework should therefore extend beyond institutional coordination to establish legally enforceable financing obligations. A comprehensive statutory framework should define the sources of disaster financing, specify conditions that automatically trigger compensation, establish minimum standards for victim support, and provide dedicated funding windows for the diverse hazards reflected in Ghana’s disaster profile. Such an approach would reduce uncertainty, improve institutional preparedness, and ensure that financial assistance is available when it is most urgently required rather than only after political or administrative approval.
Viewed alongside the UNDP Disaster Risk Finance Strategy, the proposed NADMO Bill illustrates a broader policy challenge. Both initiatives demonstrate significant progress in disaster risk governance and institutional planning, yet neither fully addresses the fiscal mechanisms necessary to translate policy commitments into predictable and enforceable support for disaster-affected populations. Consequently, Ghana’s disaster management framework risks remaining administratively stronger while continuing to depend on reactive financing arrangements that have historically delayed recovery and weakened resilience.
The Security Cost of Conflict-Induced Disasters: From Humanitarian Relief to Permanent Security Deployment
Disasters arising from internal conflict impose fiscal and security burdens that extend far beyond humanitarian relief. In Ghana, recurrent communal violence in the Savanna, Northern, and North-East Regions has repeatedly compelled the state to establish permanent military and police deployments in conflict-prone communities. Consequently, what begins as a humanitarian emergency often evolves into a long-term security commitment with significant and recurring fiscal implications.
The security rationale for these deployments is straightforward. Conflict-induced displacement requires the state to restore public order, protect affected populations, secure transport corridors, and prevent further violence. As displaced persons move across borders into Côte d’Ivoire or relocate to safer regions within Ghana, the state assumes additional responsibilities for maintaining security and preserving territorial stability. Unlike relief operations following floods or storms, which are generally temporary, security deployments associated with communal conflict frequently become permanent features of the national security architecture.
Evidence from Ghana’s public expenditure patterns illustrates the scale of this fiscal commitment. Between 2015 and 2024, successive governments consistently allocated more than 20 per cent of total public expenditure to security and public order. In the 2023 financial year alone, the Ministry of Defence received GH¢3.2 billion, while the Ministry of the Interior was allocated GH¢2.9 billion. Although these appropriations support a broad range of national security functions, a substantial proportion finances internal security operations, including the maintenance of military forward operating bases and police deployments in conflict-affected districts.
The experience of the Savanna Region illustrates the long-term financial consequences of conflict-induced disasters. Recurrent violence in districts such as Bole, Sawla-Tuna-Kalba, and East Gonja has required sustained deployments by the Ghana Armed Forces and the Ghana Police Service to protect displaced populations, maintain public order, and secure critical transport corridors. These operations demand continuous expenditure on personnel, operational allowances, logistics, fuel, communications, and infrastructure. Resources that might otherwise support schools, healthcare, local economic development, or livelihood restoration are instead committed to maintaining a permanent security presence.
This dynamic generates a dual fiscal burden. First, conflict diverts scarce public resources away from development priorities towards emergency security operations. Second, once military or police installations become permanent, the state assumes an enduring financial obligation, as premature withdrawal may create conditions for renewed violence. Internal conflict therefore evolves beyond a humanitarian crisis to become a long-term fiscal and national security challenge.
Neither the UNDP Disaster Risk Finance Strategy nor the proposed NADMO Bill 2026 adequately addresses this dimension of disaster risk. Although both documents recognise floods, fires, and infrastructural hazards, neither explicitly treats conflict-induced displacement as a disaster category requiring dedicated ex-ante financing. Nor do they establish compensation or stabilisation mechanisms capable of reducing displacement and supporting early recovery. Consequently, the state continues to incur substantial expenditure responding to the consequences of conflict rather than investing in mechanisms that reduce vulnerability before displacement becomes protracted.
From a national security perspective, this approach is fiscally inefficient and strategically unsustainable. A comprehensive disaster financing framework should therefore recognise internally displaced victims from conflict-affected populations as eligible beneficiaries alongside victims of hydrological, technological, structural, and aviation disasters. Planned resettlement, livelihood restoration, legal compensation, and community recovery programmes can significantly reduce prolonged displacement, strengthen local resilience, and lessen the long-term demand for permanent security deployments. In economic terms, investing in recovery before displacement becomes entrenched is considerably less costly than financing indefinite military and police operations after conflict has escalated.
Recognising conflict-induced displacement as a disaster financing priority would therefore strengthen not only humanitarian protection but also national security. By reducing the conditions that sustain displacement and insecurity, Ghana would shift from financing the consequences of conflict to investing in long-term stability, resilience, and sustainable development.
Global Comparisons: Lessons for a Pre-Commitment Disaster Financing Model
International experience demonstrates a clear shift away from ad-hoc disaster relief toward pre-committed, legally structured disaster risk financing systems. Across jurisdictions with high exposure to natural and man-made hazards, the dominant policy trend is the institutionalisation of ex-ante financing mechanisms that ensure immediate liquidity, predictable compensation, and reduced reliance on post-disaster appropriations.
The Philippines provides a particularly relevant example. It’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Fund allocates a fixed proportion of the national budget to disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. This arrangement ensures that financial resources are available immediately following a disaster event, without requiring separate legislative approval or discretionary executive intervention. The result is a predictable and institutionalised funding stream that enhances both response speed and administrative efficiency.
Mexico’s experience with the FONDEN mechanism further illustrates the importance of structural design in disaster financing. Initially established as a budgetary allocation, FONDEN faced significant limitations due to the annual reversion of unspent funds to the national treasury. This prevented the accumulation of reserves and weakened long-term preparedness. Subsequent reforms transformed FONDEN into a trust-based structure with ring-fenced resources and pre-defined activation rules. This institutional redesign enabled rapid disbursement following disaster events and significantly improved recovery timelines.
Turkey’s Compulsory Earthquake Insurance Pool (DASK) represents another model of risk transfer and financial pre-arrangement. By mandating insurance coverage for residential properties in earthquake-prone areas, the system distributes risk across households while ensuring that reconstruction financing is automatically triggered after seismic events. This reduces fiscal pressure on the state while accelerating post-disaster reconstruction.
Despite differences in institutional design, these systems share three fundamental characteristics. First, they rely on ex-ante capitalisation, ensuring that financial resources are available before disasters occur rather than being mobilised afterwards. Second, they incorporate legally defined triggers for disbursement, which reduce political discretion and administrative delay. Third, they adopt a multi-hazard approach, recognising that disaster risk is not confined to a single category but spans natural, technological, and human-induced events.
Ghana’s current disaster financing architecture diverges significantly from these principles. Financing remains largely reactive, dependent on annual budget allocations, supplementary appropriations, and post-disaster fundraising. This approach introduces uncertainty, delays compensation, and limits the state’s capacity to provide timely and adequate support to affected populations.
The policy implication is not the wholesale transfer of foreign models, but rather the adaptation of their core principles to Ghana’s institutional and fiscal context. A reformed disaster financing framework would require the establishment of a pre-capitalised, legally protected, and multi-hazard disaster fund. Such a mechanism should define clear allocation rules, establish automatic triggers for disbursement, and ensure that funding is available for a broad spectrum of risks, including hydrological hazards, technological failures, structural collapses, aviation disasters, and conflict-induced displacement.
More importantly, Ghana’s adoption of these principles would align disaster financing with its broader national security and development objectives. Predictable financing reduces recovery time, limits prolonged displacement, and decreases the likelihood that vulnerable populations become exposed to secondary security risks. In this sense, disaster risk financing is not merely a fiscal reform agenda but a foundational component of state resilience and stability.
Conclusion
Ghana’s disaster governance architecture reflects a persistent mismatch between risk exposure and financial preparedness. While institutional reforms have improved coordination and early warning systems, they remain constrained by a financing model that is reactive, discretionary, and dependent on post-disaster mobilisation.
The consequence is a predictable cycle of delayed compensation, incomplete recovery, and prolonged vulnerability across multiple disaster types, including floods, technological failures, structural collapse, aviation accidents, and conflict-induced displacement.
The analysis of the UNDP Disaster Risk Finance Strategy and the proposed NADMO Bill 2026 demonstrates that both initiatives strengthen institutional design but fall short of establishing the statutory, pre-capitalised financing architecture required for effective disaster resilience. In the absence of such a mechanism, disaster governance remains structurally incomplete.
International experience indicates that this gap is not an inevitable constraint but rather a function of policy design. Countries that have adopted ex-ante financing mechanisms, legally defined triggers, and multi-hazard coverage consistently achieve faster recovery outcomes and reduced long-term fiscal exposure.
For Ghana, the policy implication is therefore that disaster financing must transition from reactive relief to a legally embedded system of obligation. A holistic disaster fund is not merely an administrative reform but a foundational requirement for national security, fiscal stability, and long-term resilience.
*Footnotes*
¹ UNDRR (2017). Terminology on Disaster Risk Reduction.
² UNDRR (2017). Terminology on Disaster Risk Reduction.
³ ICAO (2016). Annex 13 Aircraft Accident Investigation.
*References*
Government of Ghana (2023). Budget Statement and Economic Policy.
UNDP & Ministry of Finance (2024). Disaster Risk Finance Strategy 2025–2030.
UNDRR (2017). Disaster Risk Reduction Terminology.
World Bank (2014, 2016). Disaster Risk Financing & GARID Report.
ICAO (2016). Aircraft Accident Investigation Standards.
Kelman (2020). “Disaster by Choice”, Disasters.
Blaikie et al. (2014). At Risk: Natural Hazards and Vulnerability.
