WYN participation at the ISDR-Asia Partnership Forum

WYN participation at the ISDR-Asia Partnership Forum

14-15 December 2017, Bangkok organized by UNISDR

Written by Dewi Dimyati (d.dimyati@wateryouthnetwork.org)

 

The Water Youth Network (WYN) alongside UN MGCY joined the ISDR Asia Partnership (IAP) forum organized by UNISDR in Bangkok, Thailand from 14-15 December 2017. It is a multi-stakeholder platform of over 100 officials from governments, regional inter-governmental organizations, civil society organizations, UN and international organizations, and bilateral and multilateral donors gathered to provide a broad policy direction to guide the implementation of the Sendai Framework and monitor the implementation for DRR in the Asia-Pacific region.

 

 

The IAP forum meets twice a year with the results taken forward to the main forum for the Asian Ministerial Conferences (AMCDRR). The next AMCDRR forum will take place in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia on 16-19 July 2018. The IAP forum opened with introduction and the stakeholders’ statement on the progress of disaster risk reduction from member states, intergovernmental and regional organisations, stakeholder groups, UN and international organisations, and individual organizations. The IAP was an excellent forum in forming multi-stakeholder including youth and children stakeholder to engage in implementing the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.

 

The children and youth stakeholder statement for the IAP forum focused on 4 commitments:

  1. Expanding programs and areas for implementing children and youth-centred DRR to build school and communities resilience,
  2. Creating a space at the regional level for discussion and sharing of technical resources, good practices/lessons learned and model policies on safe schools to minimize the impacts of disasters to children’s education,
  3. Coordinating and promoting the adoption, development and implementation of the Comprehensive School Safety Framework (CSSF),
  4. Facilitate the participation of youth as equal stakeholders in the regions formal and informal avenues of DRR policy design, implementation, monitoring and follow up, and review.

The session continued with breakout group discussion on the status of the implementation of the Asia Regional Plan 2017-2018 for the Implementation of the Sendai Framework. Each group led by a facilitator, a rapporteur and a note-taker to discuss the issues given under evidence base, challenges and opportunities.

The issues underlining the breakout group discussion sessions divided into:

  • Sendai Priority 1: Understanding disaster risk
  • Sendai Priority 2: Disaster risk governance
  • Sendai Priority 3: Investing in disaster risk reduction for resilience
  • Sendai Priority 4: Preparedness and build-back-better
  • Sendai Framework Monitoring
  • Coherence of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

Overall the major challenges identified in the breakout group discussion were management of the big data, lack of risk communication and early warning information, limited access of  DRR implementation to multi-stakeholders, poor application of multi-sectoral approach inter-sector and inter-ministerial coordination of  DRR framework policy from national to local strategies, limited accessible and standardised risk information, less preparedness plans and activities particularly on vulnerable and marginalized groups (e.g. children, youth, women, elderly, disabilities people, etc), and financing for DRR work including preparedness and build-better-back.

There are some opportunities to improve DRR progress by developing collaboration with multi-stakeholders, established national platforms between several countries to ensure DRR coordination, developing a science-policy interface to close the gap between DRR-development, enhance transparency and accountability in DRR between governance, develop global data sharing mechanisms to improve risk information, enhance  preparedness with the vulnerable and marginalized groups, and increasing community engagement and ownership of community-led disaster response.

Aa young water researcher, the IAP forum gave me the opportunity to meet with different stakeholders to share ideas on the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction in Asia-Pacific region. This forum also enables potential opportunities for working together on Disaster Reduction projects.

The key messages I took away from the session were:

  1. Improve engagement with marginalized groups such as youth, women, children, elderly, migrants and persons living with disabilities in DRR,
  2. The key goals in disaster reduction by improve public awareness and education for disaster risk reduction,
  3. Promote youth engagement in DRR, with regards to policy creation and implementation.