Disaster Risk Reduction: An Instrument for Achieving the Millennium Development Goals

Advocacy kit for parliamentarians: Disaster proofing development is one of the most cost-effective investments in poverty reduction that a country can make. Time and again, the poor fall victim to, or see schools, hospitals, homes and whole livelihoods destroyed by floods, earthquakes or other natural hazards. Yet this reversal and destruction of development gains is mostly avoidable. Wise investments in disaster risk reduction can largely protect both the population and the national coffers from such losses. This Advocacy Kit is the result of cooperation between the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR). The Kit aims to facilitate parliamentarians to play an active oversight role in building the resilience of their nations and communities to disasters, in order to accelerate progress towards the Millennium Development Goals.