Policies for Disability - Inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction in the Context of the Republic of North Macedonia

Policies for Disability - Inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction in the Context of the Republic of North Macedonia

May 11, 2023

The hazard profile of North Macedonia is characterized by the impact of a range of natural and human-made hazards and is dominated by floods, earthquakes, extreme temperatures, storms, landslides, droughts, epidemics and technical–technological incidents. Based on the availability of data on past disasters during the past two decades, in 14 disasters there were 79 human casualties, approx. 1.3 million inhabitants were affected and only eight disasters had a price tag of half a billion USD. Most human casualties were registered during the Skopje August 2016 torrential flood (22), wildfires in July 2007 affected almost half of the population (1,000,000 inhabitants) and the floods in 1995 had the highest damages of 245 million USD. Additionally, numerous small-scale disaster events throughout the year are chronically pressuring the resilience of society and communities by utilizing their finite resources and capacities. This trend is expected to grow further at an increased pace given the increase of the average temperature, the expected impact of climate change and extreme events1, the degradation of the environment, increased urbanization, etc. Furthermore, in recent years we have been facing new and emerging risks and threats, such are the migrant and refugee crisis dating from 2015, enormous air pollution in the bigger cities in the country or the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, which affected the society, communities and citizens in an unprecedented way, both on a global and national level.