In the wake of an ocean wave that horrified an unready world, hundreds of UN conference delegates yesterday got down to the business of finding ways to give man more of an edge in an age-old battle with the worst of nature.
"We must draw and act on every lesson we can," UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told participants in the World Conference on Disaster Reduction, which opened with a moment of silence for the more than 160,000 people killed in the Dec. 26 earthquake-tsunami that ravaged coasts across south Asia.
PHOTO: AP
"The world looks to this conference to help make communities and nations more resilient in the face of natural disasters," Annan said in his videotaped message.
The first day's agenda for the five-day meeting focused on routes to resilience: by protecting such critical facilities as hospitals and power plants against damage; building earthquake-safe structures, and bolstering communications systems, among others.
The Japanese government announced it would refocus its foreign aid program to put more emphasis on disaster reduction. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, addressing the conference, also said his government would offer tsunami-warning training to countries struck by the powerful, earthquake-spawned wave that sped across the Indian Ocean last month.
"It will be possible to save many lives in future Indian Ocean tsunamis if early warning mechanisms are rapidly developed," he said.
An immediate conference goal is to lay the foundation for an Indian Ocean alert network like the one on guard for tsunamis in the Pacific. The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is presenting a blueprint for a system of deep-water buoys, tide gauges and a regional alert center that would cost US$30 million and go into operation by the middle of next year. Several sessions here will deal with the practicalities of the plan.
"Rarely has a tragedy made a conference so topical and timely as this one," Annan said.
His UN emergency coordinator, Jan Egeland, told reporters he hopes governments and UN agencies will make a "strong commitment" here to establish the Indian Ocean system. He also said he believed that over the next 10 years -- the period covered by this conference's "framework of action" -- all vulnerable populations will be covered by advance warning systems.
It was "heartbreaking," he said, to see almost 3,000 people killed in Haiti by a hurricane last summer, when better-prepared countries, such as Cuba and the US, suffered relatively few casualties.
He told the conference, however, that "technology is not a cure-all."
Beyond the "hardware," Egeland said, children should be educated to the risks of disasters; hospitals, clinics and schools should be viewed as safe havens and built to withstand quakes, cyclones and other disasters; and all disaster-prone countries should adopt "action plans" to deal with the threats.
The conference convened in Kobe 10 years after much of this Japanese city was devastated in an earthquake that killed 6,400 people. Japanese officials this week cited this country's experience with natural disasters as an example for other nations.
"The most important factor in disaster reduction is to learn lessons from past disasters and to take measures in response," Japan's Emperor Akihito said.
His government's minister for disaster management, Yoshitaka Murata, noted that tropical storms were once major killers here.
"In the devastated and vulnerable land after World War II, every major typhoon cost us thousands of lives," he said. "Japan has since reinforced the systems for disaster management and invested in disaster reduction. Today, the number of victims from typhoons has been greatly reduced."
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
Four contenders are squaring up to succeed Antonio Guterres as secretary-general of the UN, which faces unprecedented global instability, wars and its own crushing budget crisis. Chile’s Michelle Bachelet, Argentina’s Rafael Grossi, Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan and Senegal’s Macky Sall are each to face grillings by 193 member states and non-governmental organizations for three hours today and tomorrow. It is only the second time the UN has held a public question-and-answer, a format created in 2016 to boost transparency. Ultimately the five permanent members of the UN’s top body, the Security Council, hold the power, wielding vetoes over who leads the
A humanoid robot that won a half-marathon race for robots in Beijing on Sunday ran faster than the human world record in a show of China’s technological leaps. The winner from Honor, a Chinese smartphone maker, completed the 21km race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, said a WeChat post by the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, also known as Beijing E-Town, where the race began. That was faster than the human world record holder, Ugandan Jacob Kiplimo, who finished the same distance in about 57 minutes in March at the Lisbon road race. The performance by the robot marked a significant step forward
RSS