Social workers key players in DRR

Source(s): United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction
Margareta Wahlström, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, responds to questions from participants at the conference of the European Association of Schools of Social Work (Photo: UNISDR)

Margareta Wahlström, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, responds to questions from participants at the conference of the European Association of Schools of Social Work (Photo: UNISDR)

MILAN, Italy, 30 June, 2105 – Social workers can play a crucial part in helping to reduce the risk of disasters thanks to their role in the communities of which they are themselves members, Margareta Wahlström, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction said here today.

“You can be the transmission chain,” Ms. Wahlström told the conference of the European Association of Schools of Social Work (EASSW), which has drawn more than 700 participants from 44 countries.

Ms. Wahlström underlined that the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) works hand in hand with a broad range of professions and organisations – not just those in the emergency response sector ¬– in order to rein in disaster losses in terms of lives and livelihoods.

Social workers, be they state employees or from charity bodies, are no exception and UNISDR is keen to boost its links with their profession, she said.

“We can do this together,” Ms. Wahlström told the conference in her keynote speech.

The role of social workers in disaster risk reduction is about far more than simply helping communities cope with the impacts of events such as floods or earthquakes. They are well-placed to identify and try to tackle what it is that makes people vulnerable in the first place, whether it is poverty, poor health and housing, environmental challenges or, as all too often, a combination of such factors.

The EASSW is currently rethinking the way social workers are trained, in order better to take into account the emerging challenges posed by climate change, migration and austerity.

“We’re at a crossroads,” said Sue Lawrence, President of the EASSW. “We need to develop a new curriculum for social work to confront the new condition that we find ourselves in. Disaster risk reduction is part of that.”

“I hope that social workers can work to help reduce disasters in Europe and around the world,” Ms. Lawrence added.

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, a 15-year international blueprint adopted by the international community in March, emphasises the need to see individual risks as part of a whole, and calls for an inclusive, participatory approach to the crafting and implementing of policies. It also spreads the remit of disaster risk reduction beyond natural hazards to cover man-made threats such as industrial accidents, as well as epidemics.

The Sendai Framework is the successor to the Hyogo Framework for Action, an agreement adopted in 2005 just weeks after the Indian Ocean Tsunami. While countries notched up successes thanks to the impetus of the Hyogo Framework, the decade-long effort also revealed what new directions were needed in disaster risk reduction.

“We talked a lot about the economy, but we didn’t talk enough about the people,” Ms. Wahlström said. “Overall, society works a little too much like this, without a constant reflection on what risk actually means to us.”

“We’ve also been called upon to ensure more coherence in the global policy agenda,” she added.

The Sendai Framework is just the first of a series of international agreements due this year that will set the tone for global policy over the coming decade and beyond.

Next month, governments are scheduled to negotiate a deal at the UN Conference on Financing for Development, before meeting in September to agree on the Sustainable Development Goals. Finally, December will see a summit of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

“Even if, globally, these are different processes, in reality they are part of the same process,” said Ms. Wahlström, underscoring that the ultimate goal is to ensure a sustainable future for the world.

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