United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction

A number of conditions will need to be created and sustained in order for UNDRR to deliver on its mandate and achieve its vision, including:

• an engaged and active international community – including governments and key policy makers, the UN system and international and regional organisations, international and regional development banks, parliamentarians, the private sector, civil society, and the science and technology community – that understands and is committed to disaster risk reduction as a strategic approach to achieve sustainable development;

• the ability and practice of countries to align their national priorities, strategies and plans – as well as the related monitoring and review mechanisms – to relevant international frameworks, in particular for disaster risk reduction, sustainable development and climate change adaptation and mitigation;
• a change in decision-making processes, policies and practices of governments, private sector and other key actors to make them truly risk-informed, which implies access to risk information and knowledge that is context-specific, appropriate and accurate;

• an all-of-society engagement and partnership, guided by the principle that governments, parliamentarians, civil society and community groups, international organisations, the private sector, members of the science and technology community, and other key stakeholders jointly engage in disaster risk reduction and act as important contributors to understanding risk and as advocates for risk-informed development;

• a continued commitment to making disaster risk reduction gender- and age- sensitive and inclusive of all stakeholders, including persons with disabilities.

UNDRR commits to enabling and fostering these conditions through three Strategic Objectives, set in its 2016-2021 Strategic Framework:

• Strengthen global monitoring, analysis and coordination of Sendai Framework implementation

• Support to regional and national Sendai Framework implementation

• Catalyse action through Member States and Partners

Monitoring and reporting progress in disaster risk reduction creates a virtuous cycle of knowledge and evidence generation and application for improved policy and practice, which forms the backbone and underlying rationale of UNDRR’s engagement across all its Strategic Objectives. Supporting countries in generating risk data and information, and regular monitoring and reporting on disaster loss, risk and risk reduction practice, create the basis for analysis and evidence. Through a positive feedback loop, this evidence informs global and regional processes in disaster risk reduction, such as the Global and Regional Platforms for Disaster Risk Reduction, which in turn inform national practice. It also is the basis for coherence with international processes on sustainable development and climate change, in particular the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on climate change. Importantly, the analysis and evidence feeds directly back into improved national implementation in the form of accessible risk knowledge, tools and capacity building.