Brussels, 28/04/2014 (Agence Europe) - Players from the world of development and humanitarian aid met in Brussels this Monday 28 April for the first-ever international forum on "resilience" - the ability of a physical person, a household, community, region or country to withstand, adapt quickly and recover from stresses and shocks - which is being held by the European Commission (DG ECHO and DG DEVCO).
Representatives of the member states of the EU, other international donors such as USAID, think tanks and humanitarian organisations which work with ECHO (United Nations agencies, the Red Cross, NGOs and the World Bank Group) are invited to exchange best practices on how to reinforce resilience in countries and regions of the world which are greatly exposed to the risks of natural disasters. They will also take stock of actions carried out to date and will begin areas of work to extend the scope of these.
With its communication entitled "Post-2015 Hyogo Framework for Action", the European Commission recently delivered its view of what should be the priorities of the new Hyogo action framework for risk reduction (EUROPE 11057).
In a communication in 2012, the institution listed the measures it recommends to make resilience central to the European policy of fighting hunger and poverty. The Commission firmly believes that helping vulnerable communities throughout the world which have suffered from repeated food insecurity crises to reinforce their ability to withstand future crises and natural disasters will help to make the humanitarian aid and development policies of the EU a success.
It is with this in mind that it is implementing the regional programme SHARE (Supporting The Horn of Africa's Resilience), an initiative combining humanitarian aid and development aid, for which some 350 million euros have been made available since 2012, and the programme AGIR Sahel (Global Alliance for Resilience for the Sahel and West Africa), which will mobilise 1.5 million euros between 2014 and 2020, with the aim of eradicating hunger by 2032. In 2013, more than 20% of the humanitarian aid made available by the Commission was earmarked for disaster preparedness and risk reduction activities, via the programme DIPECHO. (AN)