Village communities need to get involved in the disaster management process
The ‘Sendai Spring – turning risk to resilience – is an agreement by global leaders in March 2015. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR) for the first time sets targets and acknowledges risks that go beyond natural hazards and highlights the role of various stakeholders, specially the local civil society. In Sri Lanka alongside the government, several socially committed local and international agencies are grappling to find ways and means to sustain the aims and aspirations of Sendai Spring and in this regard, a half-day workshop was held at the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies (BCIS) last week.
The presentations followed three working groups – Sinhala, Tamil and English – and the deliberations showed that in Sri Lanka one of the major barriers in dealing with disaster management is the lack of political will and local action could be planned on the experiences of the 2004 Tsunami. Though there are various seminars, workshops, etc on the subject matter, as a collective priority framework experiences at the grassroots level have to be incorporated and the representation of all the stakeholders – the risk prone community, civil society, NGOs, private sector and the state – must be considered.
Summing up these working group findings, moderator Amjad Saleem of International Alert and a member of the WHS (World Humanitarian Summit) Asia Region Steering Group, said that nobody uses the institutional knowledge and that there is a need to find out who is responsible to make sure this trickles down to the grassroots level. Reflecting on the findings, he said that someone should disseminate these information and in the long term, civil society should also be empowered to deal with such situations. Some believed that Tsunami Warning systems do not work in some places, he said adding that technology should be used appropriately and village committees should be created to be part of the action network. Mr. Saleem, in his presentation, spoke on the consequences of man-made disasters and noted more than 60 million people globally are displaced owing to these disasters – the highest after 1945.