UNDRR News

As the world celebrates World Humanitarian Day, UNISDR, the strategic arm of the United Nations working on disaster risk reduction, recognizes the valuable contribution of humanitarian workers who risk their lives everyday to help others, whilst emphasizing their crucial role in reducing disaster risk.

More than 200 participants, including 38 parliamentarians, mayors and vice mayors, from 33 countries adopted the Chengdu Declaration of Action, a five-point strategy to tackle some of the most pressing issues facing cities today.

As the United Nations today commemorates the 17th International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples under the theme of "Indigenous designs: celebrating stories and cultures, crafting our own future", it is perhaps timely to flag the positive contributions such cultures are able to make to DDR and CCA.

The Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR11) titled Revealing Risk, Redefining Development will be launched today in Auckland (New Zealand) at the Third Session of the Pacific Platform for Disaster Risk Management which is the main gathering of disaster risk management experts and decision makers in the Pacific region.

A three-day workshop took place in Libreville from 25-27 July to officially launch the activities of Gabon’s National Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction. There was a clear vision from the participants of the workshop that humanitarian response could not solve the problem of disasters.

Realizing the human and economic imperative to shift from a disaster response culture to one of prevention and risk reduction, parliamentarians from Africa, Asia, and Latin America are stepping up to the challenge.

The Government of the Philippines and the United Nations secretariat for the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) will launch the latest United Nation’s Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR11) this Tuesday, 26 July, from 10:00 – 11:30 a.m., at the Sen. Padilla Room, the Senate of the Philippines, Manila.

More than twenty journalists from Lebanese radio, television and print media, as well as communication officers from the Lebanese government, attended a two-day media training in Beirut on how to cover disasters from a prevention angle.

The Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Dao Xuan Hoc said the Ministry is working with relevant national and local departments to enact a law on disaster risk prevention and reduction, clearly defining the roles of the Government and to assure that citizens had access to information on disaster risks.

Sixteen Parliamentarians from the Philippine House of Representatives yesterday adopted "the Incheon Resolution of the Philippine Parliamentarians on Effective Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation" which calls for their mainstreaming in the national budget legislation.