Urging for cohesion in international response to deal with all calamities, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday stressed on encouraging involvement of women volunteers in disaster management.
Inaugurating the Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (AMCDRR) here, Modi emphasised on working towards risk coverage for all, starting from poor households to small and medium enterprises and multi-national corporations to nation States.
Addressing the three-day-long Conference, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said India believes that disaster resilience is the collective responsibility of all segments of society, including Governments, business community, non-governmental sector and individuals.
“If we all work together with a united focus and a shared sense of responsibility to improve disaster resilience, we will be far more effective than the individual efforts of any one sector. This is, therefore, a timely and important conference, a critical first step in implementing the Sendai framework in our region,” said Singh.
Singh said disaster risk recognises no political boundaries and this includes risks caused by human actions: disasters in one region can, and will, impact other regions. “It is, therefore, also satisfying that today we realise that both disaster risk reduction, and disaster relief need to be supported through bilateral, regional and international cooperation, including partnerships,” he said.
The PM said all development sectors must imbibe the principles of disaster risk management and encourage involvement and leadership of women as they are the biggest sufferers of any disaster. “Women are disproportionately affected by disasters. They also have unique strengths and insights. We must train a large number of women volunteers to support special needs of women affected by disasters. We need women engineers, masons and building artisans supporting reconstruction, and women self help groups assisting livelihood recovery,” he said.
The Prime Minister said there should be investment in risk mapping globally, leveraging of technology to enhance the efficiency of the disaster risk management efforts and utilising the opportunities provided by social media and mobile technologies.
Modi said a fully functional Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System has become operational and along with its Australian and Indonesian counterparts, the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services is mandated to issue regional tsunami bulletins.