Jamaica is on track for a successful hosting of the Seventh Regional Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in the Americas and the Caribbean (RP20) in July 2020, Raul Salazar, the head of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) Regional Office for the Americas and the Caribbean has said.
The event will be held on July 8 to 10 in Montego Bay.
Salazar, who is leading a delegation on a working visit to the island, said he was pleased at the level of preparations underway for the staging of the event.
“Implementing a regional platform is not easy, because it has a lot of aspects to take into account. From the logistics, from the venue, for organising the commitments from different sectors, the relations with other countries — that involves the whole effort of a country, and Jamaica is, at this moment, on top of all the aspects of organising the regional platform. I think we are well on track to having a successful platform,” he said.
Regional platforms are the UNDRR conferences that bring together government officials and heads of disaster and emergency management agencies within a region with key stakeholders in disaster risk reduction, to foster collaboration and the sharing of best practices and techniques.
The platforms aid countries in achieving the targets of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015. RP20 is the first UN regional platform to be hosted in the Caribbean and had its name amended to reflect the Caribbean’s involvement.
Salazar said Jamaica’s hosting of the platform is “important, relevant and significant for the region.
“We wanted to bring the discussion… around disaster reduction in the Americas and in the Caribbean [and] around the problems the Caribbean is facing within the context of climate change in the context of intensification of the different hazards that the Caribbean faces,” he noted.
“This is quite significant, and I think this is something that Jamaica saw since the beginning. The UNDRR has the responsibility of supporting countries in the implementation of the Sendai Framework and using instruments like the regional platform. These are mechanisms that we support all around the world,” Salazar said.
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