International Conference on Gender and Disaster Risk Reduction in Beijing, China Posted: Jun 08,2009
At the invitation of All-China Women’s Federation, a delegation from Vietnam Women’s Union attended the International Conference on Gender and Disaster Risk Reduction in Beijing, China from 20-22 April 2009.
More than 100 participants from 43 countries at the ministerial and parliamentary level, along with senior officials responsible for issues related to gender, disaster risk reduction, environment and development, participated in the conference.
Attendants reviewed the progress and challenges of applying a gendered perspective to disaster risk reduction. Moreover, the attendants focused on discussing the necessity to deeply change gender-sensitive policies, combining disaster risk reduction with poverty reduction, and enhancing women and men ability to recover their communities after a disaster. Women account for half of the population yet they are most at risk when the disaster happens. This is even truer for poor women.
After two days of working, the conference passed the Beijing Declaration for Action: a set of priorities calling for international cooperation in mainstreaming gender into disaster risk reduction. The declaration is to be submitted to the international conference on disaster risk reduction in Geneva on June 2009 to write the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction.
