An
estimated 200 million young people are affected by reported disasters each year
and thousands of them are killed and injured, says United National Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in his message,
marking the International Day for Disaster
Reduction.
The
theme of for this year's Day observed on October 13, 2012 is “Women and
Girls: the [in] Visible Force of Resilience”.
Ki-moon
who was speaking on the eve of the International Day for Disaster Reduction
called for women and girls to be at the forefront of reducing risk and managing
the world's response to natural hazards.
He
said women and girls must participate in poverty reduction, climate change
adaptation and disaster risk reduction that will shape their future and those
of their families and communities.
“Across
the world, women and girls are using their roles within families and
communities to strengthen risk reduction,” the South Korean said.
The
UN General Assembly designated 13 October as the International Day for Disaster
Reduction in 2009, replacing an earlier version of the Day. Its objective is to
raise awareness of how people are taking action to reduce their risk to
disasters.
In
his message, Mr. Ban stressed that women's leadership in this area is
increasingly valuable as climate change intensifies and the world struggles to
cope with extreme weather.
“In
Bangladesh, women organized themselves to prepare for and respond to floods by
teaching other women how to build portable clay ovens and elevate houses,” Mr.
Ban said. “In South Africa, marginalized adolescent girls have been empowered
to help design plans to reduce the impact of drought and severe wind storms.”
The
Secretary-General also noted that women and girls are a force of resilience and
that encouraging them to take on leadership roles on disaster risk reduction
will benefit entire communities.
“The
best disaster recovery programmes in the world involve women who have survived
such events. If we are to build true disaster resilience we need to put the
emphasis on their greater involvement before disasters strike,” said Margareta Wahlström,
the Head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), the part of the
UN responsible for the issue, as well as the secretariat of the International
Strategy for Disaster Reduction.
Ms.
Wahlström added that women's efforts to build resilience to disasters often go
unrecognized, and the Day would help raise awareness of their key role in
communities where they are many times in charge of decisions such as securing
food, water and energy.
The
Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Irina Bokova,
emphasized that women are “disproportionately affected by disasters because of
social roles, discrimination and poverty.”
She
recalled that a gender perspective had been integrated into the design and
implementation of all disaster reduction policy in the “Rio+20 Outcome Document”
of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, which was held in
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, this year.
“Discrimination
is a violation of human rights – it is also a bad policy,” she argued. “Women
should not be discriminated and instead must be “powerful agents of change” to
ensure a sustainable future.”
“This
is why we are committed to empowering girls and women through education, to
allow them to take charge of their lives and those of their families and
communities,” Ms. Bokova added. “Women must participate fully in planning and
implementing all disaster risk reduction measures.”
To
this end, UNESCO's Global Partnership on Women and Girls' Education has been
training young women in disaster-prone countries such as Haiti, Myanmar,
Pakistan and Indonesia on how to reduce their vulnerability to disasters and
increase their resilience, the cultural agency's chief added.
A
wide range of events are taking place around the world this week to mark the
Day, including tsunami drills in Myanmar, a workshop on gender-based violence
in Vanuatu, community work in Rwanda, a poster and essay contest in the
Philippines, a panel discussion at George Washington University in the United
States, an education seminar in Nicaragua, and a seismic risk discussion in
Greece, among others.
However,
during the 3rd annual Women in the World
Summit held in New York in March 2012, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
said: “Women have the power to shape our destinies in ways previous generations
couldn’t imagine.”
This observation about women and girls as a force to counter many
of the problems ailing the world represents an idea whose time has come, and
not a minute too soon, she said.
According to the 2011 Global
Assessment Report (GAR) on – Revealing Risk, Redefining Development, a large number of countries concur with Tanzania, which
identifies the lack of appropriate knowledge of ‘how and where to implement
gender matters’ as the main barrier.” The report finds that only 26% of
countries reported significant ongoing commitment to gender as a driver of
progress.
“In their vital but unsung roles, women
rewove the fabric of their communities while men rebuilt the structure” – Helen Cox, Women in
Bushfire Territory in Enarson and Morrow (eds.) said.
She said Women and girls 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.
Cox stressed that women must always be part of policy, planning
and implementation processes.
“Women and girls are 52% of the world’s population and are among
the most affected by disasters,” she noted.
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