Articles

It has often been said that minimizing the health impact of disasters and emergencies is too big a job for the health sector alone.  Achieving this goal requires the commitment and active support of many different agencies, sectors and individuals. It also requires joint training initiatives in a variety of areas that often are still new to the health sector. The involvement of multisector partners will have the value added of gaining buy-in from non-health professionals, who are critical to achieving health sector objectives.

Collaboration and partnerships with regional disaster management and coordination bodies (in Latin America and the Caribbean) account for significant advances in all aspects of disaster risk reduction:

• In Central America, the Center for the Coordination of Natural Disaster Prevention (CEPREDENAC), created in 1988, is an inter-governmental organization that promotes and coordinates international cooperation and the exchange of information, experience and technical and scientific advice on disaster prevention, risk reduction, and response. CEPREDENAC is a specialized agency of the Central American Integration System (SICA). Through a regional dialogue and in line with Central America’s Strategic Plan for Disaster Reduction, CEPREDENAC works to a) promote vulnerability reduction as an indispensable element of the development process; b) expand the participation of other sectors and civil society; c) strengthen local capacity for disaster risk reduction; and d) improve disaster response capacity at local, national and regional level. Read more about CEPREDENAC’s multi-year plan for disaster risk reduction (this is available in Spanish only).

The United Nations is a vast and complex organization. The UN System is made up of the Secretariat, headquartered in New York, and a wide variety of specialized agencies, funds, departments, commissions and other bodies. WHO (and PAHO in the Americas) is the specialized health agency. View the overarching structure of the United Nations.

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) is a strategic framework, adopted by United Nations Member States in 2000. The objective of the UNISDR is to guide and coordinate the efforts of a wide range of partners to achieve substantive reduction in disaster losses and build resilient nations and communities as an essential condition for sustainable development.

The private sector is becoming an increasingly important partner in the field of disaster risk reduction and humanitarian aid. Establishing partnerships with the business community or with private sector foundations or individuals can benefit both development and humanitarian aid. Developing strong partnerships takes time and effort and the most successful relationships are those in which both partners fill pre-existing gaps or bring complementary skills to the situation.

The private sector often offers its expertise to NGOs and the UN system. Corporations are increasingly interested in going beyond merely funding humanitarian organizations to forging closer collaboration with the humanitarian sector. This requires finding innovative ways to develop corporate partnerships that respond to both parties’ needs, and have a longer duration.