IIN – OAS Newsletter Nº 8: Child Rights in Disaster Risk Management
IIN – OAS Newsletter Nº 8: Child Rights in Disaster Risk Management
The Inter-American Children’s Institute (IIN) presents a special newsletter on child rights in disaster risk management, one of the priorities of the Action Plan for the period 2011- 2015.
The issues of managing the risk of disaster and how States act in the face of emergencies and during their recovery processes have attracted increasing interest in the region in recent years. Evidence shows that disasters have become increasingly complex.
Through a comparative study on the basis of data provided by the Centre for Research of Epidemiology of Disasters of the Catholique University of Louvain, Belgium, the Department of Sustainable Development of the OAS, through its Risk Management and Adaptation to Climate Change section, has reached the following conclusions with regard to the 1991-2000 and the 2001-2010 decades: whereas during the 1990s the number of recorded disasters reached 700, during the following decade figures exceeded 900; that is, an increase of 30 percent. In terms of persons affected, numbers doubled in 2000-2010: 81 million people were affected by disasters, compared to 38 million in the previous decade, according to this report.
It is children in particular who are especially vulnerable to risk, emergencies and disasters, in view of their age and level of development. For this reason, the governing bodies for childhood in the region have begun to discuss the need to approach the subject together in order to develop tools and strategies to provide support for national, bilateral and regional interventions regarding the effects and consequences of disasters.
In this context, the states, through their representatives to the Directing Council of the IIN, have expressed their concern in this respect, emphasizing that national strategies to address these situations to a great extent lack directives which position children as an especially vulnerable group and that they therefore need to be given priority and specialized care.
It is for this reason that this will be one of the IIN central lines of action for the 2011-2015 management period. In this special newsletter, readers will find news, a paper reporting the institutional position towards the subject, and a complete list of publications, experiences and links of interest.
eeShortly, the Institute will launch a special newsletter on early childhood, one of the central lines of action for the period.
