International Day for Disaster Reduction: “Live to Tell”
The 13th October marks the International Day for Disaster Reduction; the 2016 “Live to Tell” campaign seeks to create a wave of awareness about actions taken to reduce mortality around the world.
In July 2016, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction, Mr. Robert Glasser, launched “The Sendai Seven Campaign – 7 Targets, 7 Years”, an advocacy initiative to advance the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction with the goal of saving lives, reducing disaster losses and improving management of disaster risk.
The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction aims to:
- Reduce global disaster mortality and number of affected people globally by 2030, aiming to lower average per 100,000 in the decade 2020-2030 compared with the period 2005-2015
- Reduce direct disaster economic loss in relation to global gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030
- Substantially reduce disaster damage to critical infrastructure and disruption of basic services, among them health and educational facilities, including through developing their resilience by 2030
- Increase the number of countries with national and local disaster risk reduction strategies by 2020
- Enhance international cooperation to developing countries through adequate and sustainable support to complement their national actions for implementation of this Framework by 2030
- Substantially increase the availability of and access to multi-hazard early warning systems and disaster risk information and assessments to the people by 2030.
Mr Glasser stated that: “Despite many successes there are still far too many lives being lost in predictable events because of failures to deploy early warning systems, learn lessons from past events and to grasp the growing threat of climate change and its impact on extreme weather events including storms, floods and drought.”
More than 900 people have lost their lives as a result of Hurricane Matthew. In addition to the human cost it has been estimated that tens of thousands of homes have been destroyed and 350,000 people are in need of aid.
For more information visit http://www.unisdr.org/we/coordinate/sendai-framework
The Aid & International Development Forum is pleased to invite you to the 2nd annual Aid & Development Africa Summit, taking place on 28 February-1 March 2017 in Nairobi, Kenya, to discuss innovations, policies and initiatives to support emergency response and community resilience.
The participants will have an opportunity to discuss latest policy updates and strategic partnerships for a resilient infrastructure and how to build a culture of resilience and strengthen disaster preparedness in Sub-Saharan East Africa.
Country Directors of Ethiopia like John Graham at Save the Children and Stuart Worsley at Mercy Corps will examine disaster response activities to recent drought emergency in Sub-Saharan East Africa, identifying new best practice, challenges, possible solutions and what can be done better next time. For more information about the topics covered at the Aid & Development Africa Summit visit http://africa.aidforum.org/agenda
Watch an interview with Stuart Worsley at Mercy Corps at the AIDF Africa Summit 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt9w8255AFw
The AIDF is also pleased to announce dates for the upcoming Global Disaster Relief Summit, taking place on the 6-7 September 2017 in Washington D.C. The Summit will discuss ways to strengthen disaster resilience and early-warning systems through information sharing and latest technologies.
You will gain practical advice from over 70 speakers on how to improve disaster response globally by discussing lessons learned and network with 350+ decision makers from government agencies, United Nations, Red Cross, NGOs, donors and foundations, military, relief agencies and the private sector.
Visit http://disaster-relief.aidforum.org/why-attend/highlights_2016 to see highlights from this year’s Summit.
