International agreements and collaborations of relevance to civil defence

Swedish civil defence planning was re-established in 2016, following a new Defence Act for the period 2016-2020. The Defence Act states that the new civil defence should be built upon the existing crisis management organisation. The purpose of this report is to generate insights regarding the role of international agreements and collaborations in crisis management today, and their use in the reinstatement of civil defence planning. In the present study, three sectors of importance to civil defence were chosen to be studied in more detail; the health, energy and food sectors. The investigation is based on a combination of a literature study, an interview study carried out with experts within the selected sectors and lastly, document analysis of the most relevant agreements and collaborations. The latter have been categorised after what type of cooperation they focus on: framework agreements, knowledge exchange/information sharing agreements, regulative agreements and agreements concerning practical assistance. These agreements validity and credibility are discussed using the concepts capability and political will, which determines whether they will be effective or not. The report shows that there are few international agreements and collaborations within the investigated sectors today that explicitly are valid in war scenarios. International agreements and collaborations that explicitly extends to scenarios of larger crises are also relatively uncommon. In everyday work, informal networks are often important to handle smaller crises or shortages of supply. Further, existing agreements often include a force majeure clause making them invalid during strained conditions. This means that a revision of security of supply and cross border collaboration is necessary and in need of further investigation to develop capacity within civil defence.