UNDRR News

Double amputee Firoz Ali Alizada believes that people living with disabilities are the biggest untapped resource for disaster planners around the world. The 31-year-old uses the example of his home country Afghanistan where people living with disabilities remain on the margins of decision making despite providing such a compelling example of day to day resilience.

UNISDR Champion, Senator Loren Legarda, today announced she is proposing new legislation to tackle the problem of land degradation in the Philippines which is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world.

An innovative school director in northern Thailand has shown how his pupils can learn in safety with little additional financial cost and burden on staff.

The Head of UN office for Disaster Risk Reduction, Margareta Wahlström today officially acknowledged Canberra as a Role Model city for UNISDR's Making Cities Resilient Campaign by presenting a certificate to the Australian Capital Territory Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Simon Corbell.

Two countries sitting at opposite ends of the world are emerging as beacons of good practice in terms of innovative public-private partnerships that have been proven to reduce disaster risk.

The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) today issued a warning that a lack of safe drinking water is emerging as a major natural hazard for many small islands in the Pacific.

Sendai City in Japan has been selected to host the World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in 2015. The city of one million people in the northern region of Tohoku was one of the hardest hit zones in the March 2011 Great Japan Earthquake and Tsunami.

UNISDR Chief, Margareta Wahlström, today welcomed yesterday's inauguration by the Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh, of the country's National Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction which brings to 86, the number of such platforms around the world. These National Platforms provide important support to the implementation of the Hyogo Framework for Action, the global agreement on reducing disaster losses.

When college sophomore Sam Johnson started a Facebook page following the September 2010 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, to rally his peers to help affected communities, he never imagined that his idea would eventually mobilize an 'army' of young people across the country to take up similar efforts.

Five years after Cyclone Nargis claimed over 138,000 lives, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction is joining forces with the media in Myanmar to highlight the lessons learned as the anniversary of the tragedy comes around.