13th October: International Day for Disaster Reduction

13/10/2012 - The International Day for Disaster Reduction (IDDR), October 13, aims at raising awareness of how people are taking action to reduce their risk to disasters. The theme of the 2012 International Day for Disaster Reduction (IDDR) is "Women and Girls – the [in]visible Force of Resilience".

Women and girls are powerful agents of change. The way they contribute to protecting and rebuilding their community should not be overseen. To be strong, a community cannot overlook half of its population: gender inequality puts everyone in danger when natural hazards strike. Strengthening the gender balance in a community means strengthening resilience.

The European Commission recognizes the importance of disaster preparedness programmes that include the whole community. From Guatemala to Bangladesh, our Disaster Risk Reduction programmes involve everyone in the village, from school children to elderly, and men and women alike.

On October 16th, we will be debating "Disaster Risk Reduction at the age of Climate Change" with our partners the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) and the European Network of Political Foundations (ENOP) at the 2012 European DevelopmentDays.