UNDRR News

An innovative urban developer in one of the world's most hazard-prone countries has urged public and private sector leaders to embrace his company's vision of building cities that 'people escape to rather than run away from' during disasters.

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.

A panel of eight leading women experts meeting at the birthplace of the Hyogo Framework for Action called on UNISDR Chief, Margareta Wahlström, to exert pressure for gender equality in disaster risk reduction. The dialogue with Ms. Wahlström was part of Kobe's observance of International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction.

UNISDR today recognized Sendai, the largest city in Japan's tsunami-struck region of Tohoku, as a role model for the Making Cities Resilient Campaign for "promoting community-based disaster risk reduction and empowering people to act on disaster risk reduction."

Japanese school children have asked the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, Margareta Wahlström, to make sure that children's views are taken into account in the consultations on a new framework agreement on disaster risk reduction to succeed the Hyogo Framework for Action.

Some of the most dramatic images of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami came from Sendai City where tsunami waves travelled up to 10 km inland resulting in many deaths, flooding of the airport and the sweeping away of cars and airplanes.

Governor Toshizo Ido runs Japan's Hyogo Prefecture which has become synonymous with disaster risk reduction. Hyogo Prefecture, home to 29 cities, was tragically thrust into the limelight in 1995 when it was hit by the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake which caused great destruction and the loss of 6,300 lives mainly in Kobe, Awaji and Takarazuka. Over 40,000 people were injured.

UNISDR has organized an exchange visit between the Philippines and Japan, two of the countries worst-affected this year by a series of disasters ranging from a major earthquake which triggered a tsunami and a nuclear meltdown in Japan, and back-to-back typhoons in the case of the Philippines...