Harmful information has always been part of crises. To take just one example, the 1918 influenza became the “Spanish flu” not because it began in Spain, but because wartime censors elsewhere kept quiet while neutral Spain’s press reported freely. The misinformation has lasted to this day.

What has changed however is speed, reach and extent of deliberate manipulation of narratives, driven by new technologies and societal polarisation. This is why the IFRC’s World Disasters Report 2026: Truth, Trust and Humanitarian Action in the Age of Harmful Information matters so much for all of us.

The report uses a practical framing: harmful information is information that can cause, contribute to, or result in harm. It powerfully argues that the information environment as part of the crisis itself, something that can increase risk, slow response, and undermine legitimacy. The consequences are painfully clear. People avoid services, fear spreads faster than guidance, stigma grows, access shrinks, and staff and volunteers can become targets.

Having worked a lot on “big” reports – as contributor, editor and in one case, founder – my observation is that the best of them do five jobs.

They can be a Torch, illuminating hidden or complex problems so they become impossible to ignore. They can be a Ruler, setting new shared measures and benchmarks for understanding challenges or opportunities. They can be a Spanner, offering workable fixes that people can use. They can be a Crowbar, prising open stuck systems by combining evidence with sponsorship and coalition. And they can be a Blueprint, offering new organising models for the future.

The 2026 World Disasters Report authors have to be praised for doing three of these jobs remarkably well.

• As a Torch, it makes the harms visible, from service uptake and stigma to staff safety and the weakening of humanitarian principles. Harmful information does not only exploit public confusion. It exploits organisational blind spots.
  
• As a Ruler, it gives the system usable framing and makes trust measurable. IFRC’s Community Trust Index tracks what drives trust between National Societies and the communities they serve. The findings are both encouraging and uncomfortable. Overall trust is high, an average of 8.15 out of 10 across seven countries, but transparency is consistently the weakest driver, averaging 6.34. Neutrality is more subjective and more fragile than the humanitarian sector might like to admit.
  
• As a Spanner, it points to practical capability and shows results. Listening and monitoring, feedback loops, community engagement, staff guidance and digital safety are treated as core parts of response. The Ebola experience in the DRC is a powerful illustration. Sustained community dialogue and a feedback system that captured a huge amount of community feedback, and saw resistance to safe and dignified burials falling by remarkable levels over the course of the response.

Crucially, this is not a report that stops at diagnosis. There is real Crowbar and Blueprint potential here. Its recommendations are clear about what states, platforms and humanitarian actors should do. Protect humanitarian space. Put crisis protocols and transparency in place on communications platforms. Build guidance, training and community-led verification into responses.

Of course, this requires the sector to pick up the messages and act on them. Donors have to support the capability, agencies have to build it into everyday practice and leaders have to make transparency and feedback non-negotiable. And platforms have to accept that their design choices can make crises safer or more dangerous, and operate with due sense of accountability and responsibility.

I finished the report convinced by its core argument: that the future of humanitarian action will be shaped as much by what people believe and who they trust as by hazards themselves.

Harmful information is not new. Our willingness to confront it, in ways that protect people and strengthen trust, is. In this report we have the tools to support that will. Let’s hope we are up to the job.

Moving forward

Want to better understand how harmful information is shaping crises around the world?

Explore the insights and evidence from the World Disasters Report 2026.

This year’s edition examines how misinformation, disinformation and information gaps are affecting people during disasters and humanitarian responses and what humanitarian actors can do to respond more effectively.

Discover practical lessons, real-world examples and forward-looking recommendations to help strengthen trust, communication and humanitarian action in an increasingly complex information environment.