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Children are partners for disaster risk reduction
Oct 13 marks the International Day for Disaster Reduction, and what better opportunity to think about how children can meaningfully contribute to any disaster risk reduction plan!
Children possess a unique perspective which we grown-ups have outgrown. Children can be helpful in identifying potential risks in a community. They see, sense and hear things which adults may be too busy to notice. Children can help us understand our personal and environmental risks to find ways to reduce or mitigate their impact. Indeed, children have a right to play a role in making themselves and their community safer!
In recognition of this, a five-point Children?s Charter was launched earlier this year at the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction. This Charter was as developed in consultation with more than 600 children from 21 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Children identified three key themes as priorities: education, child protection and access to basic information. Building on those ideas, the Charter states among other things that:
- Schools must be safe and education must be uninterrupted
- Child protection must be a priority, before, during and after a disaster
- Children have the right to participate and to access the information they need
- Community infrastructure must be safe, and relief and reconstruction must help reduce future risk
- Disaster risk reduction must reach the most vulnerable
?While it is widely acknowledged that effective risk management must involve those most at risk, all too often, a valuable resource ? is being overlooked, and that is the potential contribution of children. Children are repeatedly portrayed as victims of disaster and climate change?children can and should be encouraged to participate in disaster risk reduction and decision making.? (Children on the Frontline ? Children and Young People in Disaster Risk Reduction: Plan International and World Vision)
Guiding the rationale behind children and disaster risk reduction are these key facts:
- Some 66 million children are affected by disasters every year. As natural hazards are increasing, and while more and more people suffer from the related catastrophes, children are among the most traumatized as their ability to cope with unexpected and painful interruptions to their regular schedules is still not fully developed. (UN Int?l Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction - UNISDR)
- Children are tomorrow?s decision makers. World Vision joins UNICEF, Plan International, and Save the Children working together as ?Children in a Changing Climate Coalition?, along with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and others, believe it is vital to include the unique perspectives of children in disaster risk reduction.
- As children grow and become youth, their potential to become strategic DRR enablers for their communities grows as well. We need to provide them with information and support to become active participants, decision makers and implementers in the DRR process for their communities and countries.
Listening to the voices of children will continue to be World Vision?s Asia Pacific priority. The WV Asia Pacific Humanitarian and Emergency Affairs Community Resilience team has partnered with WV Philippines to pilot Child-Focused DRR education modules, and we look forward to launching these new materials in the early part of this new fiscal year.
Our goals join those of World Vision around the world: to stimulate bottom-up community participation in the DRR process, encourage positive perceptions and thinking about the value of DRR, complement ongoing efforts for risk reduction and disaster preparedness in our National Offices and ADPs, and see empowered communities and individuals take greater charge of their own disaster risk reduction.
?Step Up! for Disaster Risk Reduction? (http://www.unisdr.org/2011/iddr/) is a call for each one of us, regardless of role, to embrace DRR as a wider organizational and community opportunity which needs the participation and commitment of us all!
