International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction

Salam Gunakanta Singh *

The International Day for Disaster Reduction (IDDR) encourages every citizen and government to take part in building more disaster resilient communities and nations.

The United Nations General Assembly designated the second Wednesday of October as the International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction as part of its proclamation of the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction.

In 2002, by a further resolution, the General Assembly decided to maintain the annual observance as a vehicle to promote a global culture of natural disaster reduction, including prevention, mitigation and preparedness.

In 2009, the UN General Assembly decided to designate October 13 as the official date and also changed the name to International Day for Disaster Reduction.

Celebrating Disaster Risk Reduction
The International Day for Disaster Reduction is a day to celebrate how people and communities are reducing their risk to disasters and raising awareness about the importance of DRR.

The International Day for Disaster Reduction (IDDR) encourages every citizen and government to take part in building more disaster resilient communities and nations.

The International Day for Disaster Reduction started in 1989 with the approval by the United Nations General Assembly.

The UN General Assembly sees the IDDR as a way to promote a global culture of disaster reduction, including disaster prevention, mitigation and preparedness. Originally celebrated on the second Wednesday of October (resolution 44/236, 22 December 1989), the UN General Assembly decided to designate October 13th as the date to celebrate the IDDR (resolution 64/200, 21 December 2009).

By resolution 64/200 of 21 December 2009 the General Assembly decided to designate 13 October as the date to commemorate the Day and to change the Day's name to International Day for Disaster Reduction.

The objective of the observance is to raise awareness of how people are taking action to reduce their risk to disasters. The theme of the 2013 International Day for Disaster Reduction (IDDR) is "Living with Disability and Disasters".

Persons living with disabilities are among the most excluded in society, and their plight is magnified when a disaster strikes. Not only are they less likely to receive the aid they need during a humanitarian crisis, they are also less likely to recover in the long-term.

This year, the International Day for Disaster Reduction focuses on the approximately one billion people who live with some form of disability, and their vulnerability to disaster.

The theme for 2013 will focus on people with disabilities.

The Step Up initiative started in 2011 and will be focusing on a different group of partners every year leading up to the World Conference for Disaster Reduction in 2015 - Children and Young People (2011), Women and Girls (2012), people living with disabilities (2013), and the ageing population (2014).