24th July 2018, Kabul. UN-Habitat Afghanistan hosted a three-day Training of Trainers workshop on Mainstreaming Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation into Sustainable Development in close cooperation with Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority (ANMDA), senior representatives from different national and local authorities in Afghanistan and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR).

The objective of this Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) workshop is to support the Government of Afghanistan to develop the national and local risk reduction strategy and monitoring implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the UN global action plan to reduce disaster risk and losses. The Sendai Framework was adopted at the Third UN World Conference for Disaster Risk Reduction in March 2015.

The course was an opportunity to better understand the frameworks for disaster risks and its linkages with Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Developments, the New Urban Agenda and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

At the end of this three-day training, an important milestone was achieved with the first draft National Plan on DRR highlighting opportunities for enhanced collaboration among ministries and cooperation with partners in the country, as enshrined in one of the recommendations of the Sendai Framework.

During the opening ceremony, H.E Qassem Haidari, Deputy ANDMA Minister explained the importance of implementing the Sendai Framework in Afghanistan reiterating “how prone and vulnerable to natural disasters is Afghanistan, as per regional and world disaster reports, 2016/2017 in terms of coping and adaptive capacity, exposure and vulnerability. This country is located in a seismic active region with very complicated geology. This training workshop is very much needed to enhance our understanding regarding the SFDRR and how to mainstream DRR, and how to ensure synergy among SFDRR, SDGs and Climate Change”. At the end of the training, Deputy Minister Haidari congratulated UN-HABITAT and UNISDR for providing this opportunity to support the risk reduction capacity of the Afghanistan government. The adoption of a National Plan on DRR will be an important contribution to the National Urban Policy of Afghanistan, currently under development.

The training course was delivered by Mr. Sanjaya Bhatia, Head of Global Education and Training Institute (GETI) of UNISDR and Ms. Sarah Wade-Apicella, Programme Management Officer at GETI/UNISDR, in cooperation of UN-Habitat’s Project for City Resilience (PCR), with the funding support from the Government of Japan.