IHS Markit
James Petretta
Overview: This report gives a brief summary of how the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) virus is likely to affect labour strikes, protest and riot, civil war, interstate and terrorism risks. It will look at each region and consider the short-term and long-term implications. In this report we judge “short-term” to cover the period during which the disease is spreading, and “long-term” to be after the spread has peaked and some form of normality is returning. Included are our violent risk risk score changes due to the pandemic; note that some have gone down.
It should be noted that the actual spread of the disease, its perceived spread and the reaction by the public, governments and non-state groups, will differ globally, regionally and even within countries. For example, most of
Europe is behind Italy in the rate of spread, the US government is behind most of Europe in its reaction, and China is starting to regain some form of routine operation. We will consider the COVID-19 virus’s impact on existing grievances and conflicts, as well as its impact on those triggered by the pandemic. We will assess the violent risk outlook in each region in greater detail in subsequent reports.
