Right from the Communities: People's Views on Disasters and their Reduction

In the year 2015, two important global initiatives- the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) will be entering into the final year of their stipulated timeframe. From early 2013, the United Nations Development Group and UNISDR have simultaneously initiated a consultative process to come up with the post-2015 development agenda/sustainable development goals following the Rio +20 and a new DRR framework, respectively. The UN Development Group has selected Pakistan as one of the priority countries for the consultation process. Please see annex 5.1 for details.
UNISDR has requested all the national governments to consult all stakeholders within their countries for their input to post-2015 DRR framework. In this regard the agency encouraged National Disaster Management Authority Pakistan to organize such consultations at provincial and district levels. Meanwhile UNISDR also encouraged RDPI to capture the main issues and proposal coming directly from the communities living with the disaster risks so that the same could be incorporated in the broader consultation process. This report is a contribution of RDPI towards this end.

Besides this introductory section, there are four sections of the report. In Section 2 the issues/problems in relation to disasters highlighted by the respondents have been given. In Section 3, their suggestions to address these issues have been provided. In Section 4 community members/groups’ recommendations to reduce the disaster risks have been recorded, while Section 5 comprises the annexures.