UNDRR News

Mexico is in the grips of one of the worst droughts in 70 years - a catastrophe which has devastated agricultural production for over one year now. According to the National Water Commission the prolonged drought has affected 70 percent of the country and decimated agriculture in the states of Aguascalientes, Coahuila, Durango, San Luis Potosí, Sonora, Tamaulipas, and Zacatecas, among others.

A new study by UNICEF and UNESCO is a timely assessment of just how some countries are faring, or not, with the implementation of disaster risk reduction education seven years after such education was requested by the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA).

Following 12 days of rains brought on by seasonal southwest monsoons, there are signs that the chronic floods which have submerged 50 percent of Manila as well as nearby areas are abating.

UNISDR Parliamentary Champion for Disaster Risk Reduction, Abdou Sané, Member of Parliament from Senegal, recently welcomed the African Union's decision to establish an African Risk Capacity Secretariat - a specialized agency of the African Union which will help elaborate a legal agreement on a pooled risk insurance facility for droughts, floods, earthquakes and cyclones.

A series of radio and television commercials aimed at educating and sensitizing millions of viewers in the Philippines about disaster risk reduction have just begun airing throughout the disaster prone south-east Asian nation.

Japanese school children have asked the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, Margareta Wahlström, to make sure that children's views are taken into account in the consultations on a new framework agreement on disaster risk reduction to succeed the Hyogo Framework for Action.

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) and the World Cities Scientific Development Alliance (WCSDA) today announced the launch of the Resilient Cities Award to recognize excellence in land use planning and design and other activities that help protect communities from the impacts of natural hazards.

Some of the most dramatic images of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami came from Sendai City where tsunami waves travelled up to 10 km inland resulting in many deaths, flooding of the airport and the sweeping away of cars and airplanes.

Panama, 23 July 2012 - Concern about earthquakes and tsunamis brought together 33 Mayors in the Dominican Republic this month to express their support for the UNISDR “Making Cities Resilient” campaign and to demand budgetary support from central government for disaster risk reduction measures in their cities and towns.

UNISDR's 2011 Annual Report is now available online and reveals that its two landmark Global Assessment Reports on Disaster Risk Reduction Reports (GAR) for 2009 and 2011, have had over 200,000 chapter downloads over the last three years.