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Displaying 15 of about 20 resultsGeneva, 20 May -- After announcing last week that Geneva would take part in the United Nations "Making Cities Resilient" campaign, Pierre Maudet, the incoming Mayor of Geneva as of 1 June, said the city would share experiences with other local governments seeking to manage risk.
Mr. Maudet made that comment at a meeting convened by the United Nations s…
By Dizery Salim
GENEVA, 10 November 2011 – Eighteen countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have agreed to tighten up on school safety while also integrating disaster risk reduction into the school curriculum, following high-level talks on education in Panama City.
Between 1970 and 2009, over 32,000 schools in South America were damaged or destro…
By David Singh
GENEVA, 26 October 2011 – The UN has issued a flash appeal for US$15.7 million to provide emergency assistance to El Salvador which has now been pounded by heavy rains and floods since 10 October.
Tropical Depression 12-E arrived in El Salvador two weeks ago bringing more rainfall than Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and registering the highest…
The cities of Blumenau, Jaragua do Sul, Rio do Sul, Itajaí, Tubarão and Florianopolis from the southern state of Santa Catarina, Brazil joined the Making Cities Resilient world disaster reduction campaign.
The membership event was held on April 14 in Florianopolis, the state capital of Santa Catarina, at the offices of the Ministry of State Administrat…
Building on last year’s United Nations High-level Plenary Meeting on the Millennium Development Goals, the first-ever informal thematic debate on disaster risk reduction − organized under the auspices of the office of UN General Assembly President Joseph Deiss, with support from the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) – took place…
Geneva, 12 May – The cities of San Francisco (Philippines), Santa Fe (Argentina), and District of North Vancouver (Canada), were unveiled as winners of the United Nations-Sasakawa Award for Disaster Risk Reduction last night at a special ceremony on the second last day of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in Geneva.
San Francisco, a small…
GENEVA, 1 November 2011 - Role model cities from around the world are meeting for two days in Geneva to brainstorm the next phase of the campaign “Making Cities Resilient – My City is Getting Ready!” and have agreed on extending it to 2015.
The 17-month old campaign which now has over 900 members was praised by city representatives from India, the Phil…
Geneva – Strict building codes in Chile, the legacy of a devastating 9.5 magnitude earthquake in 1960, continue to play a large part in protecting people even when an 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck 50 near Concepcion on 27 February 2010, says UNISDR.
The 7.0 magnitude earthquake of 12 January, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, which struck closer to the surfa…
30 June 2011, Mexico City - President Mauricio Mobarak of United Consulting & Corporate Services Global (UC&CS) has signed the 'Statement of Commitment by the Private Sector for Disaster Prevention, Resilience and Risk Reduction', announced by UNISDR's Private Sector Advisory Group during the Third Session of the Global Platform for Disaster Ris…
As part of the 124th Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Assembly, held from 15 to 20 of April in Panama City, a meeting was organized with parliamentarians on the importance of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and building sustainable development.
The panel was moderated by Maureen Ballestero Vargas, former Vice-President of the Legislative Assembly of Costa…
By David Singh
NEW YORK, 22 September: At the opening of the General Debate of the 66th session of the UN General Assembly yesterday, incoming Assembly President Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser identified disaster prevention as one of the key issues that will “help frame our work this session”.
Al-Nasser said a particular priority during the current sessio…
In the aftermath of Hurricane Irene that hit the east coast of the United States just over a week ago, it is a reminder that disasters caused by extreme weather events are becoming common place even for countries and cities that are considered to be at the pinnacle of development.
Local governments and authorities have always been at the front lines of…
By Dizery Salim
GENEVA, 2 November 2011 – Turkey’s 23 October quake revealed that only 9 per cent of building owners were insured despite it being mandatory in the country’s municipal areas.
Turkey’s main earthquake insurance authority says the low figure comes from having too few people with insurance in the affected region, citing lack of awareness,…
NEW YORK, 29 September - As the international community gears up for the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development to be held in June next year, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is calling for any future framework for sustainable development to include a “clear prescription for incorporation of disaster and climate risk management.”
The UN General A…
GENEVA, 14 December 2011 - The UN office for disaster risk reduction, UNISDR, and ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability have completed a four-month pilot test of the Local Government Self-Assessment Tool (LG-SAT) designed to help disaster risk reduction efforts in over 1,000 cities and local governments that have signed up to UNISDR's global "Makin…