Crisis Prevention and Recovery

Foreword

Kemal Dervis, UNDP Administrator

Our mission at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is to promote development, including by addressing obstacles to peace and prosperity. This second Annual Report of UNDP’s Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery (BCPR), Outlook 2007, offers an overview of how UNDP has continued to increase its efforts to deliver tangible results in preventing crisis and promoting recovery. Created in 2001, BCPR works around the world to restore the quality of life for men, women and children who have been devastated by natural disaster or violent conflict. Through the Bureau, UNDP gets involved early by providing a bridge between humanitarian efforts and long-term development. Even as humanitarian workers are distributing blankets and trucking in food and water to meet the survivors’ immediate needs, UNDP is already on the ground working to help give survivors a future.

While we continue to make impressive progress, the serious challenges we face—some of which are changing—require sustained commitment and action. Climate change, for example, brings with it a need for renewed emphasis on reducing the risks of natural disasters. There is also an urgent need to prevent the use of sexual violence as a tactic of war. To respond effectively to these and other challenges, we must be faster, more flexible, and more innovative. And we must constantly build new and stronger partnerships with many other parts of the UN system, the World Bank and a range of civil society organizations.

While more work remains to be done, we are making impressive strides in this direction. For instance, in high-risk countries we have increased the number of disaster reduction advisers who provide expert technical advice and support to national governments. In the past year, UNDP began to implement its new Eight Point Agenda to protect and empower women in crisis. More generally, we have also rolled out a new strategy to respond immediately to emerging crises by sending expertise and resources to facilitate the early recovery process.

This Annual Report highlights in more detail these and some of the other areas in which we have made marked advances in 2007, including working towards an international ban on cluster munitions. It is a timely reminder that the crisis prevention and recovery agenda is crucial to our efforts to promote sustainable development in many countries in which we work.

Introduction

KATHLEEN CRAVERO, ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR AND DIRECTOR, BUREAU FOR CRISIS PREVENTION AND RECOVERY

This is a year of accomplishment: a year in which the Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery rolled out a new strategic plan that allows us to work more effectively in disaster and conflict zones around the world; a year in which we prioritized gender equality; a year in which we made our new immediate crisis initiative a reality; and a year in which we laid the foundations for an international treaty banning cluster munitions.

Since its inception in 2001, the Bureau has sought to promote new ways of doing business—faster, earlier and in riskier situations—to restore the quality of life for those who have been affected by disaster or violent conflict. 2007 was successful in a number of ways: we now have a clear criteria to determine whether and how the Bureau should respond to crises; we promote gender equality in all stages of crisis prevention and recovery and we focus the Bureau’s work in ways that maximize impact and deliver results; finally, we are forging partnerships that allow us to achieve our objectives more fully and to extend our outreach and expertise.

Many tragic events of the past decade—whether those caused by natural disaster or armed conflict—have clearly demonstrated the disastrous effects crises have on national development. The Bureau has endeavored to take this point a step further, supporting the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) country offices in their efforts to integrate crisis prevention and recovery as a core component of their development work. We are pleased to see the crucial link between our work and the overall mission of UNDP. Indeed, crisis prevention and recovery is now fully integrated in the UNDP Strategic Plan.

Since the introduction of UNDP’s Eight Point Agenda for Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality, our focus on women’s issues—their needs as well as their contributions—is more important than ever. To implement this ambitious agenda, the Bureau developed a three-year action plan in 2007, which mapped out human resources, funding, programming, and monitoring and evaluation needs. The roll-out of the Eight Point Agenda is already evident in Afghanistan, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, Liberia, Somalia, Sudan and Timor-Leste, among other countries.

In 2007, we seized the opportunity to lay the groundwork for an international treaty on cluster munitions, seeking to ban the development, production, transfer, stockpiling and use of this insidious weapon. The Bureau supported the core group of Member States leading the campaign to ban cluster munitions by providing technical, financial and organizational support for all the regional meetings leading up to the Dublin Conference on Cluster Munitions in May 2008. In close collaboration with the core group of Member States supporting the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development, the Bureau also helped organize meetings in Guatemala and Nairobi to develop regional declarations that commit governments to a series of practical steps to prevent armed violence.

Our efforts to link climate change to disaster risk reduction are also worth noting. The incidence of natural disasters has escalated in recent years. In 2006 alone, 426 disasters occurred in 108 countries, affecting 143 million people and causing USD 34.6 billion in economic losses. While climate change affects everyone, it affects the most vulnerable most severely. The poorest of the poor in developing countries, ill-prepared for disastrous weather events, are the first to lose their lives, homes and sources of income. In addition to this tragic human cost, natural disasters also erode development achievements, thus reversing efforts to eradicate poverty. In 2007, the Bureau worked with disaster-prone countries to establish disaster reduction as a national priority and strengthen basic institutional structures for disaster preparedness.

Finally, a key achievement of 2007 was the development of a global early recovery policy. Early recovery addresses the critical gap in coverage between humanitarian relief and long-term recovery—between dependence and self-sufficiency. While working within a humanitarian setting, early recovery looks toward the future—assessing damages to infrastructure, property, livelihoods and societies. The goal is to enable a smoother transition to long-term recovery—to restore livelihoods, government capacities and shelter—and offer hope to those who survive crises.

Operating in crisis countries is a risky business. It requires taking calculated risks. We are fortunate to have partners who are willing to take these risks. I am pleased to report that unearmarked funding has never been higher and the number of donor partners has increased from one to eight since the creation of the Bureau in 2001. With the support of donors and partners, we will continue to pursue our shared mission of helping communities and nations recover and promoting innovative solutions to crises across the globe.