Update

UNISDR Chief Margareta Wahlström today announced that children from Japan who continue to live with the consequences of the Great East Japan Earthquake, will attend the Global Platform on Disaster Risk Reduction in May.

Almost two years after the devastating Great East Japan Earthquake, UNISDR Chief Margareta Wahlström, paid a return visit to one of the worst-affected towns, Minami-Sanriku, in Miyagi Prefecture, and met with the Mayor, Mr. Jin Sato.

UNISDR Chief, Margareta Wahlström, met with active women leaders in Fukushima city last month on a visit to Fukushima Prefecture in the lead-up to the second memorial day of the Great East Japan Earthquake on Monday, March 11.

Representatives of UN agencies, funds and programmes completed an action plan this week that will accelerate the integration of disaster risk reduction into all UN country level operations in response to the rising levels of disruption to millions of lives each year from disasters.

Africa's infrastructure is under pressure from increasing disasters but the infrastructure deficit is an opportunity for the continent to take a global lead on sustainable development and to leap-frog environmentally unfriendly technologies, said Mrs. Rhoda Peace, the Africa Union Commissioner for rural economy and agriculture, at a seminar marking the 11th African Day for the Environment hosted by the Tunisian government.

The UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction, Margareta Wahlström, today welcomed Nablus' commitment to become the first Palestinian city to join UNISDR's Making Cities Resilient Campaign.

Within days of its launch, a new UNISDR survey has received over 1,000 responses spelling out what cities and towns would like to see included in the new global framework for disaster risk reduction which will follow on from the existing Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) in 2015.

The Government of Palestine supported by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) has taken steps to establish its first national disaster loss database. The initiative was launched in the presence of the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction and UNISDR Chief, Margareta Wahlström, who began a visit to Palestine this week.

Algeria has held North Africa's first national review of the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) as UNISDR's consultations continue around the world on developing a new global framework for disaster risk reduction by 2015.

Risks that have historically played out in rural areas like drought, floods and wildfires "are being transferred and transformed and expressed differently across Africa's fast growing cities and towns," said Dr. Ailsa Holloway in her keynote address to the 4th Africa Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction today.