The UN and UNDP in Brussels

Crisis Prevention and Recovery

While violent conflicts and natural disasters affect both developed and developing countries, their effect on countries with high levels of poverty and inequality has been to compound existing problems. This is particularly pronounced in countries suffering repeated disasters or protracted conflicts. Those countries find themselves caught in a vicious cycle of crisis, poverty and risk, which can fuel instability at the national, regional and global levels. In the area of Crisis Prevention and Recovery, the UNDP fosters partnerships to design and implement crisis and recovery programmes and works to ensure that long-term development policies and programmes incorporate opportunities for disaster reduction and conflict prevention. The UNDP does this by identifying both basic and complex needs of those who are affected by conflict and then provide the tools necessary to reintegrate them back into their societies.

The UNDP therefore tailors its recovery assistance to the particular needs of the affected communities.  Further, in both post disaster and post conflict situations, the UNDP works in enhancing conflict prevention and disaster-risk management capabilities, ensuring improved post-crisis governance functions, and restoring the foundations for local development through the restoration of security and a revival of the local economy

Actions undertaken by UNDP with the European Commission

The EC and the UNDP have a long history of close cooperation in the field of crisis prevention. The EC communication on Crisis Prevention emphasizes the need to take a genuinely long-term and integrated approach for treating the root causes of crises, ensuring co-ordination between the Commission, Member States and other international partners. The areas in which the EC has been making an important contribution are: political dialogue, macro-economic environments, support for democracy, rule of law and civil society, security sector reform, combating the trade in drugs and small arms, management of natural resources and specific short-term and post-crisis measures. Examples of EC-UNDP crisis prevention activities include border management in Central Asia, the Western CIS and the Western Caucasus, and contributions to UNDP's Disarmament, Demobilization and Reinsertion (DDR) programmes around the world, with activities ranging from vocational training for ex-combatants to support for the justice sector. With regards to recovery after a conflict, UNDP and the EC have been working to ease the transition between crisis recovery and long-term development in crisis areas, rebuilding livelihoods as well as strengthening the capacity of communities to build a better future. These activities include the following: (i) rehabilitation and development of social and civic infrastructure, (ii) rehabilitation and development of physical infrastructure related to production, water and sanitation, education and health, (iii) income generation and micro-financing with a cost recovery element, (iv) access to services and markets, (v) sustainable natural resource utilisation and management, (vi) human resources skills development, (vii) technical and vocational training, (viii) de-mining. The European Commission has been an important contributor to UNDP's post-crisis activities as an umbrella organization. Key examples include the following multi-donor trust funds, all of which are administered by UNDP: the Iraq Reconstruction Trust Fund; Afghanistan Law and Order and Anti-Narcotics Trust Funds; the Sudan Reconstruction Trust Fund.

Did you know?

In 2007 in India, with a joint UNDP-EC initiative, 1,045,000 persons were trained in disaster response and management, including 22,500 teachers. State disaster management Plans and Acts were drawn up based on learning from the project, and two State governments enacted the disaster management Acts.