First consultative meeting on national platforms for disaster risk reduction

To address the complexity of disaster risk reduction (DRR), governments collectively called for the establishment of multi-stakeholders platforms for DRR through UN resolutions, including; ECOSOC resolution 1999/63 in 1999, UN General Assembly Resolution A/RES/59/231 in 2005 and the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015(HFA) adopted in 2005.

In response to these calls made by governments, the UNISDR Secretariat developed, in cooperation with other UN agencies, the Guidelines for the Establishment of National Platforms for DRR that have been used as a reference in different countries in their efforts to establish and develop multi-stakeholder platforms. Feedback information received from governments over the past couple of years confirmed that the Guidelines were useful but needed to be reviewed together with end users and national platforms for disaster risk reduction (national platforms for DRR), to reflect government concerns and emphasize government ownership and leadership of National Platforms for DRR.

To this end, the UNISDR Secretariat together with the Government of South Africa, Department Provincial and Local Government, organized a first consultative meeting on national platforms for disaster risk reduction in the context of the implementation and follow up of HFA.