UNDRR News

On 13 October, the International Day for Disaster Reduction (IDDR) will be an occasion to pay tribute to millions of girls and women around the world who are on the frontline making their communities and societies resilient to the impacts of disasters and the effects of climate change.

The UN disaster risk reduction chief today urged Asian and European Parliamentarians to work towards a new framework for action on disaster risk reduction that will protect more people and their assets from disasters as the current framework will end in 2015. The Hyogo Framework for Action -- Building the Resilience of Communities and Nations to Disasters came into force in 2005 for a period of 10 years.

There are strong links between climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) across several European countries according to the results of a survey presented by a Working Group on Climate Change Adaptation, chaired by Norway, at the European Forum on Disaster Risk Reduction in Croatia this week.

Details of the first-ever peer review of a country implementing the world's first agreement on disaster risk reduction, the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA), were presented today on the final day of the European Forum on Disaster Risk Reduction in Croatia.

UNISDR, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, is implementing a key recommendation on National Platforms for Disaster Risk Reduction from the Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, "to further review how they can best support domestic decision-making and international cooperation."

The UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, Margareta Wahlström, today urged other countries to follow the example of Croatia in recognising individual efforts to raise awareness of disaster risk in their own communities.

Experts from 27 European countries opened three days of discussions today in Croatia on a successor to the world's first global agreement on reducing disaster risk, the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities which expires in 2015.

A new report by UN-Habitat links the world's future prosperity to the ability of cities to reduce risk and build resilience to adverse forces of nature.

Some of Asia's most influential business leaders today agreed to adopt Business Continuity Management (BCM) as a first step towards safeguarding their businesses against disasters.

UNISDR chief, Margareta Wahlström, today welcomed the focus on the importance of systematic recording of disaster losses and impacts contained in the 2012 MDG Gap Task Force Report launched by the Secretary-General yesterday.