Civilian protection in the context of disaster planning and response

Abstract

The World Humanitarian Summit 2016 called for more comprehensive humanitarian reform. Importantly, the third core responsibility identified in the outcome document is to “honour our commitment to leave no one behind which requires reaching everyone in situations of conflict, disaster, vulnerability and risk”. This suggests that the execution of a universal humanitarian imperative should not discriminate against any type of hazard, disaster or crisis. Humanitarian action has often been trapped in reactive humanitarianism – a form of systematic humanitarian action and intervention that is often made ex-post disasters. The global commitment for a more proactive humanitarianism is best represented by the successful endorsement of the Sendai Framework for Action (SFA) 2015 where countries were again pushed to invest in disaster risk reduction (DRR).