Chairman of National Natural Disaster Management Committee Vice Chairman of State Administration Council Deputy Prime Minister Vice-Senior General Soe Win addresses International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction 2021
Nay Pyi Taw October 13
The International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction 2021 was observed at the meeting hall of the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement in Nay Pyi Taw at 9.30 am today with an address by Chairman of National Natural Disaster Management Committee Vice Chairman of State Administration Council Deputy Prime Minister Vice-Senior General Soe Win.
Also present were committee member union ministers, deputy ministers, permanent secretaries and officials. Invited union ministers, the chairman of Nay Pyi Taw Council, chief ministers of regions and state, deputy ministers, cabinet members, Union agencies, and internal and international NGOs participated in the meeting through video conferencing.
In his address, the Vice-Senior General said the UN formally proclaimed the 90s as the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR) to reduce the devastating effects of natural disasters through effective management. All the global countries enhanced their efforts to alleviate the losses caused by natural disasters.
Despite the IDNDR, the impact of natural disasters in terms of losses never faltered. So, the first World Conference on Natural Disaster Reduction was held in 1994 during the decade and adopted the Yokohama Strategy and Plan of Action on disaster prevention, preparedness and mitigation.
The second World Conference on Natural Disaster Reduction held in Hyogo, Japan in 2005 adopted the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) (2005-2015) for sustainable reduction of disaster losses; and the third World Conference on Natural Disaster Reduction held in March, 2015, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015-2030).
In accord with the Hyogo Framework for Action and the Sendai Framework, Myanmar took management measures and implemented the projects suitable to our resources to reduce the disasters that usually happened based on the country’s geographical conductions.
The International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction has been annually held since 2010.
The celebrations were staged in accord with the objectives and themes set for respective fields. The theme of this year’s celebration is “Only together, Can we save the planet!” Under the theme accepted by all global countries, international cooperation is to continue till 2030 to provide enough aid to national level project tasks of the development countries in realizing Target F of the seven targets within the Sendai Framework (2015-2030). The aim of this year’s celebration in accord with this theme is to prevent or reduce destruction to living things and the environment in the world including the developing countries and to create a process of disseminating wide knowledge by finding out strong and weak points of the past events.
We also intend to mobilize international donors and aid organizations to cooperate more in national and community level disaster reduction despite challenges and difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and expose role models of those organizations seeing good results.
The cyclone Nargis in 2008, the most powerful and detrimental to our country throughout history of natural disaster, and the worst in the whole Asia after 1991, is a most significant example of climate change.
As the conservation of the planet Earth such as environmental conservation and watch for climate change was undertaken in the entire world, the majority of the global countries followed the climate change convention, the Tokyo protocol, the Bali roadmap, the Paris agreement and many agreements which emerged from the First UN Environmental Conference in 1972 and the World Earth Summit in 1992.
Conservation of the planet Earth and reduction of natural disaster risks cannot be implemented by a single country and an organization. Only when all the people from the countries, organizations and individuals from various arenas follow the visions will the whole world and each country meet the goals to some extent.
Among seven Global Targets of the Sendai frameworks, this year’s target aims to organize all to participate in the mitigation of natural disaster risks against living and non-living beings, raise the cooperation momentum, and motivate the international aid organizations to give further aid to the developing countries. It is obvious that the global countries participate in the prevention, containment and treatment activities of COVID-19 in line with the seven Global Targets of the Sendai frameworks.
Relevant departments and organizations need to emphasize the efficient use of local and international aid in mitigating the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic, natural disasters and manmade dangers. Departments and organizations need to contact each other while region and state governments are urged to cooperate with Union ministries in continuously operating the natural disaster management machinery or the country to have socio-economic development of Myanmar with resilience of climate change.
Then, the video messages sent by the UN SecretaryGeneral and the Chief of UN Office were presented. Vice Chair of the Management Committee Union Minister Dr Thet Thet Khaing extended greetings and the video clip to mark the international day for disaster risk reduction 2021 was also presented.
The Vice-Senior General then posed for documentary photo with attendees to the meeting and viewed the documentary books, pamphlets and booklets on disaster risk reduction.