UNDRR News

The Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for Disaster Risk Reduction, Margareta Wahlström, arrived in Myanmar today at the invitation of the government, on a three-day visit during which she will engage with senior Government Ministers on a national action plan for disaster risk reduction and a Disaster Management Law.

When the annual monsoon rains come, 14-year-old Atik worries. As the deputy chief of the children’s council in her home village of Dowan, in Indonesia’s Central Java province she knows,” When it rains heavily for hours, it seems that soil in some parts of this village will shift and cause a landslide.”

Vulnerability to natural hazards is rapidly on the increase in Europe, UNISDR Chief, Margareta Wahlström, told the Second Annual European Forum for Disaster Risk Reduction (EFDRR) yesterday in Skopje, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Every morning from 17-24 September, Kobe University student Erick Gonzales picks up his badge, his assignment and tools for the day, and is transported inside the coastal city of Ofunato to help the city clean up and recover from the damage caused by the 11 March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake.

Last March, when the Great East Japan Earthquake struck Kamaishi Higashi Junior High School, in Iwate Prefecture, on the Pacific coast, a 3rd year student promptly opened a window to secure the evacuation route for his classmates and then hid under his desk.

Amidst growing concerns about drought crises in some of the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) of the Pacific, the Government of Tuvalu today began a three-week nationwide needs assessment of water, agriculture and health facilities.

More than 30 cities across seven provinces in Pakistan signed up to the UNISDR World Disaster Reduction Campaign Making Cities Resilient on Saturday though many of them are still under water or recovering from heavy floods.

UN Disaster Risk Reduction Chief, Margareta Wahlström, met today for the first time with Pakistan’s President, Asif Ali Zadari, to discuss how Pakistan responds to “the new normal” in dealing with floods which have inundated the country for two successive years.

UNISDR champion, Senator Loren Legarda of the Philippines, has called for an integrated flood warning and response system as 3.2 million people struggle with the impact of back-to-back typhoons which have triggered widespread floods across the country.

The Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for Disaster Risk Reduction, Margareta Wahlström, arrives on a three-day visit to Pakistan tomorrow (October 6) during which she will meet with President Asif Ali Zadari, Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, the National Disaster Management Authority, Meteorological Department officials and aid donors, to discuss future risk reduction measures as the country tries to cope with floods which have displaced an estimated 5.4 million people.