The Fifth ECO International Conference on Disaster Risk Management was held in Astana on 10-11 November, 2010. The Conference was organized by the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan represented by the Ministry for Emergency Situations, the Secretariat of the Economic Organization (ECO) and the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR).
The ECO International Conference has been held regularly since 2006 as the main forum for discussing disaster risk management related issues in the ECO region. The main objective of the Fifth Conference was to provide coordination in the ECO region on disaster preparedness, response, and risk reduction and to explore ways to improve them as well as to review achievements and to assess the current level of national investments in disaster risk reduction in general and in school and hospital safety in particular.
The delegates from the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Republic of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan participated in the Fifth Conference. The representatives of the UN Agencies including UNDP, WHO Regional Office, UNICEF as well as representative of the other organizations such as Red Crescent Societies of Central Asia, were also represented in the Conference.
The Conference was inaugurated by His Excellency Vladimir Bozhko, Minister of Emergency Situations of the Republic of Kazakhstan. In the inauguration meeting also Ambassador Hassan Taherian, ECO Deputy Secretary General, Ms Hanna Singer,Acting UN Resident Coordinator for Kazakhstan and Ms. Margareta Wahlstrom, Special Representative of Secretary General of the United Nations gave speeches respectively and underlined the importance of the conference and the issue of disaster risk management for the region.
In this regard, ECO Deputy Secretary General, while referring the recent devastating flood in Pakistan which caused displacement of the nearly twenty million people in this country, said the issue of natural Disaster has become more relevant to the ECO region than any other regions. He added that in the ECO region, every year natural hazards destroy economic and social infrastructure, damage environment and ecology and also caused heavy damage to the economic development. He mentioned the recent flood in Pakistan demonstrates the potential threats and considerable dimensions of the disasters for the countries of the region.
The two days conference focused on relevant issues, such as (i) Regional launch of the Global Campaign for 2010-2011 “Making Cities Resilient (ii) Climate Change related disasters (iii) National investments in Disaster Risk Reduction, (iv) School Safety – Current Problems and Good Practices and vi) and Hospital safety – Current Problems and Good Practices.
At the end of the Conference, a set of recommendations including joining of the ECO member states to the World Disaster reduction Campaign, Effective participation of the ECO member states in the Third Session of the Global Platform, next year in Geneva, Cooperation of the relevant scientific institutions of the region on disaster risk management, in order to prevent duplication and better utilization of scarce financial rescores, and making further efforts by the member states for achieving the targets related to School and Hospital safety.
The Conference also reemphasized the need for focusing attention and rescores on reducing of the Disasters in the region and acknowledged the need that any investment in infrastructure of the development activities should account for risk of the natural disasters.
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