Links: international organisations in disaster risk reduction
ENHANCE pointed readers to five international organisations working on disaster risk, climate and drought, each described in a line or two with its mandate and scale.
ENHANCE kept a short list of international organisations relevant to disaster risk reduction. Five were listed, each with a brief description:
United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR). Created in December 1999 within the UN Secretariat to implement the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. UNISDR was also a partner in the ENHANCE consortium, and two of its senior officials gave interviews to the project (Margareta Wahlström and Paola Albrito).
PreventionWeb. A participatory web platform for the disaster risk reduction community, run by UNISDR. The Letters from Sendai pointed to it for the Global Assessment Report of 2015.
European Commission, Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection DG (ECHO). Created in 1992, it was described as having provided EUR 14 billion of aid in 140 countries over 20 years. At a DG CLIMA workshop in February 2016, a DG ECHO head of unit presented the follow-up to the Commission’s Green Paper on disaster insurance (workshop record).
World Meteorological Organization. The UN specialised agency for the atmosphere, climate and water.
United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. Described as having 195 parties working on drylands and drought.
The list leans towards the UN system, which reflects where the project’s policy work was aimed: the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai in March 2015 and the framework it adopted (glossary entry on the Sendai Framework). The European side of disaster response, including the Union Civil Protection Mechanism, is covered in the article on EU solidarity in disasters.
