Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what are the main humanitarian and technical objectives that they will be promoting at the forthcoming United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction to be held in Sendai, Japan in March 2015.

The UK is an active supporter of the current Hyogo framework. The Department for International Development (DFID) and Cabinet Office have a joint lead in shaping the Government’s policy and technical objectives ahead of the 3rd UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction to be held in Japan on 14-18 March, where a new post-2015 framework for disaster risk reduction will be finalised. Negotiations are still on-going, and it will not be possible to confirm final outcomes until the meeting in Sendai itself.

The Government’s main objectives build on the priorities set out by the UK representative at the May 2013 Global Platform meeting in Geneva. These are:

• A need for improved accountability. A key part of this is to support the development of robust and relevant targets and indicators.

• To ensure disaster risk reduction is taken seriously in development efforts. We are doing this by working to ensure strong links between the post-2015 DRR framework and the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals and climate change agendas.

• An increased focus on local and community level. For example, we are pushing hard to increase the accessibility of information so that communities themselves can understand and better manage the risks they face.

• We have also placed great emphasis on the use of evidence-based decision-making in this area, drawing on the latest science.

The UK has engaged actively in the negotiation meetings on the successor to the Hyogo framework for action. In shaping its approach, the Government has drawn heavily on the UK’s own experience of disaster risk management, which has demonstrated the importance of a multi-agency and multi-sectoral approach.