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International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction 2012
by The Ovi Team
2012-10-13 11:51:19 |
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Theme for 2012: Women and Girls - the [in]Visible Force of Resilience. By resolution 44/236 (22 December 1989), the General Assembly designated the second Wednesday of October International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction. The International Day was to be observed annually during the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction, 1990-1999.
 By resolution 64/200 of 21 December 2009 the General Assembly decided to designate 13 October as the date to commemorate the Day and to change the Day's name to International Day for Disaster Reduction. The objective of the observance is to raise awareness of how people are taking action to reduce their risk to disasters.
The theme of the 2012 International Day for Disaster Reduction (IDDR) is "Women and Girls - the [in]Visible Force of Resilience".
Women and girls are empowered to fully contribute to sustainable development through disaster risk reduction, particularly in the areas of environmental and natural resource management; governance; and urban and land use planning and social and economic planning - the key drivers of disaster risk.
What is Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR)?
It's a different way of thinking: "There is no such thing as a 'natural' disaster". For example, when a building collapses after an earthquake, we think of it as a disaster and something we can't control. We can't stop an earthquake from happening, but could we have prevented the building from collapsing? Could the building have been built so that it wouldn't have collapsed? Have there been earthquakes here before? If so, should we have built here in the first place?
Disaster risk reduction is about understanding our personal and environmental risks of a hazard, like an earthquake, flood, hurricane/cyclone, and landslides and finding ways to reduce this risk so that we are not affected by them, or be able to bounce back quickly if they do affect us.
Disasters don't have to happen. We can all do something to reduce our risk!
Women & girls are powerful agents of change.
In their vital but unsung roles, women rewove the fabric of their communities while men rebuilt the structure.
They are activists, law makers, social workers, role models, community leaders, teachers, and mothers.
They are invaluable in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation processes if real community resilience and significant reduction of disaster impacts are to be achieved. Women must always be part of policy, planning and implementation processes.
They represent roughly half the world’s population and are among the most affected by disasters. Their experience, knowledge and expertise are critical to climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction strategies and processes.
Household adaptation measures are more likely to take root if women are included in processes from beginning to end.
A resilient community is a gender-sensitive community.
If we are going to see real development in the world then our best investment is women.
Gender inequality puts women, children and entire communities in danger when natural hazards strike. The weakest link can mean the destruction of the entire chain. Gender inequality is a weak link - strengthening that link strengthens resilience.
Gender equality begins with education. Women and girls must be included in public life. This begins with the education of boys and girls through to adulthood. This is how men and boys will become involved in removing the barriers that prevent women and girls from participating in the disaster risk reduction cycle.
Women and girls are effective purveyors of information. Information exchange must be two-way and accessible for equal inclusion of women's and men's voices.
The theme for IDDR 2012 does not imply that women and girls are invisible.
It is about drawing attention to the fact that their efforts to protect and rebuild their communities before and after disasters are often unrecognized and that 'invisibility' is a socio-cultural construct.
It is about highlighting that their ability to contribute is hindered by lack of inclusion and poor understanding of gender inequality.
It is about celebrating the contribution women and girls are making before, during and after a disaster.
It is about moving beyond the tendency to view and portray women and girls as victims. And even though women and girls feature disproportionately among the casualties of disasters they are 'active victims'.
It is about stories of action and initiative by women and girls, and it also seeks to shed light on the obstacles that prevent them from participating in Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation.
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