United Nations Sasakawa Award Global Platform 2019

Opening Remarks

United Nations Sasakawa award

GP2019

8.15 - 19.15 - 16 May 2019, Room 2

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen -

I am delighted to welcome you to the United Nations Sasakawa Award for Disaster Risk Reduction.

This award is given every two years to individuals or institutions that have made substantive impact on reducing disaster risk.

Working in any field of humanitarian or development endeavor requires courage, dedication and commitment. This is perhaps even more true of those working in disaster risk reduction. Although

I am very pleased to work within a UN organization that has perhaps one of more positive mandates of the UN mandate: that is, trying to prevent something bad from happening, rather than picking up the pieces after it has happened- it is also true to say that is is not always easy working in the realm of the hypothetical.

Add to that the complexity that goes along with risk, and you will recognize that the organisations and individuals we are recognizing here tonight have a special calling- as many of you joining us here tonight do too- and they have lived up to it with great honour.

The Sasakawa Award theme this year is ‘Building Inclusive and Resilient Societies’. This is a theme that is not only in sync with the Global Platform guiding theme, but also a theme that is very close to my heart.

We cannot deny that disasters - where natural hazards negatively meet people - are coming faster, lasting longer and hitting harder.

The people hit hardest, ironically, are those who have done the least to cause these significant changes – the poorest.

Nothing lays bare inequality and discrimination like a disaster. It is this inequality and exclusion which drives vulnerability.

Disasters- and particularly those delivered through extreme weather events- magnify social inequalities and further disadvantage those who are already vulnerable.

While developed countries suffer in terms of absolute economic losses, it is largely the vulnerable and poor who pay the human cost in terms of loss of life, injury and displacement.

More people are displaced every year by disasters than by conflict.

It follows that if we are to reduce the impact of disasters we must also urgently address inequality.

The achievement of the 2030 Agenda depends on ensuring that those who are at risk of being affected by natural and man-made hazards, and in particular vulnerable and marginalized groups, are not left behind.

A key theme of the Sendai Framework, and therefore a key tenet of our work as UNDRR, is inclusivity. The Sendai Framework emphasizes the importance of a vulnerability-focused, inclusive methodology around disaster risk reduction being integrated into planning, policy and funding. Unless we invest in prevention and building resilience, we will not be able to break the cycle of disaster-response-recovery.

The Sasakawa Award is an outstanding initiative in rewarding our colleagues and organisations who are working hard, at the coal face, to break that vicious cycle.

It was very heartening that this year, we received some 61 nominations, and I am very pleased and encouraged to see how much is happening at the community and national level to better integrate women, youth, aged and people with disabilities into risk reduction.

I want to thank the Nippon Foundation for their kind and continued support, without whom this prize will not exist.

I also want to give a special thanks to our three jury members for their hard work, thoughtfulness and many hours of time during the selection process:

• Najla Romdhane, Full Professor at the National School of Engineers of Tunis, Tunisia.
• Marcie Roth, CEO of the Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies and President of Inclusive Emergency Management Strategies, and
• Hans Peters, Director of International Programs, The UPS Foundation who acted on behalf of his president M. Martinez.

I also want to thank all our partners who sent their nominations.

I will stop here, as you are certainly more interested to know about the finalists but just a last word, if I may:

Ladies and Gentlemen- our time is up on this planet. Our very survival is at stake. Urgent, massive change in our policies, in our planning, in our funding strategies- in the very way we live is needed.

If we put the most vulnerable at the heart of that change: the displaced, the migrants, the children in the street, the women caring singlehandedly for their families, the homeless- then we will put the survival of humanity on track. We must find this compelling: as the people and organisations we are about to award, clearly do.

Thank you.