Participants from several Arab States at a recent workshop share experiences on national strategy development

By Sarah Wade-Apicella

22 August 2018, Incheon – Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan are in advanced stages of disaster risk reduction strategy development and contributing significantly to the achievement of Target E of the Sendai Framework; to increase the number of countries with national and local disaster reduction plans. 

The progress was shared at the UNISDR Global Education and Training Institute in Incheon, where Twenty-one participants from Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritania, Palestine, Sudan, Tunisia and Qatar, including some Sendai Framework focal points, met to exchange their experience on approaches towards national strategy development. They were joined by officials from Afghanistan and experts from the Republic of Korea. 

Participants discussed current risk trends and shared progress and approaches taken to develop their strategies and plans. Despite varying national contexts within the region, there was agreement that developing such strategies requires new and renewed coordination and partnerships across public and private sectors and stakeholders. It also requires an increased capacity to understand and make arguments for disaster risk-informed investment. 

Ambassador Wahbi of the League of Arab States recalled that before the adoption of the 2011 Arab Strategy for DRR, “We had no clear concepts of disaster risks, but after, we began step one by establishing an institutional framework to cope with disaster risks. Now the League of Arab States’ mission is to put such strategies into all Arab countries. Implementing Target E by 2020 in countries and locally is a priority.”