This report is intended to help prepare and implement effective legal frameworks for disaster risk management (DRM) that are adapted to a country’s needs, drawing on examples and experience from other countries. It examines aspects of different countries’ legislation according to how they address relevant themes in the HFA, as well as issues identified by state parties and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement in a 2011 International Conference resolution.
The report draws on research from a sample group of 31 countries: desk surveys of the laws of 27 countries, and case studies in 14 of these countries. The sample countries were chosen for geographical representation, and to cover a variety of risk profiles, income and human development levels.
Key findings:
- Although DRR is highly prioritised and integrated into DRM laws in some countries (e.g. Algeria, Japan, Mexico, Namibia, New Zealand, Philippines and Viet Nam), there is still considerable potential in many of the other countries to make DRR a higher priority in their respective legal frameworks and in their implementation.
- Setting out detailed provisions for DRR in DRM law is not the only way to achieve more effective DRR. Depending on disaster risk levels and national and local governance capacities, disaster risk may also be managed effectively through sectoral laws and local government responsibilities. Both the style of legislation and the process of reform need to be adapted to each national context.
- Most of the sample countries have established specific DRM institutions or mandates within their legislative and institutional frameworks. Some establish implementing institutions at the local level (e.g. in Guatemala and Namibia), while others supplement general governance functions at the provincial and local levels with DRM advisory committees (e.g. in South Africa and Algeria), and still others principally use existing local government institutions (e.g. in Iraq and Italy). In all cases, the key to effective local institutional structures to support DRR is that they have clear legal mandates and authority, matched with dedicated resources and capacity.
- Funding for DRR from the national to the local level has been a challenge that has hampered implementation in many of the sample countries. The issue is not only one of overall resource constraints for DRM. DRR is rarely separated from general support to DRM, so that it sometimes may not compete favourably with urgent matters of emergency response and recovery. In other cases, this combined method of financial support can result in a highly integrated approach to DRM and DRR, which would not be possible with separate accounting processes.
- Some DRM laws make special provision for the participation of civil society and communities in the advisory and implementing institutions, often including a specific role for National Societies as an auxiliary to public authorities in the humanitarian field (e.g. in Nicaragua). Other DRM laws include more general obligations to be inclusive of non-government stakeholders without specifying how. Evidence from the case study countries indicates that these types of provisions are not always easily implemented and that there is often less participation than the law may intend. Community and civil society participation in the DRM system at all levels could be greatly enhanced by more defined roles in the DRM laws.
