UNDP report: Crisis prevention and recovery vital

Despite progress in preventing conflicts and disasters last year, many countries still face chronic crises and often remain mired in poverty.

“In many places around the world where conflicts and disasters escalated in 2012, we saw how crises can undermine development investment and cause terrible human suffering, especially in communities that are fragile and lack resilience,” noted Jordan Ryan, Director of the Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery, in a new United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report.

“Even when crises do occur, major opportunities for transformation often coexist alongside all the terrible disruptions that conflicts and disasters bring.”

The report, released this week, highlights UNDP’s achievements in preventing and responding to conflict and disasters in 2012.

“From Latin America and Caribbean nations, where high levels of crime and violence often exacerbate poverty; to Syria, where a deadly conflict and ensuing humanitarian crisis continues to extract a deadly toll; and to the Philippines, where Typhoon Bopha killed more than a thousand people and displaced hundreds of thousands more. All of these crises impede development, reinforce inequality and blunt
efforts to lift people out of poverty,” UNDP Administrator Helen Clark stated in the report.

She pointed out that there was much tragedy in the course of the year – from the Arab States region to the Horn of Africa, the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Sahel, and to the Caribbean and the Americas, where Hurricane Sandy caused much damage and destruction.

“As the report shows, 2012 was an extraordinary year for UNDP to advance its commitment to bring the benefit of development to countries beset by crises,” Ryan added. “Given the indisputable challenges that confront our times, crisis prevention and recovery must remain a vital and core part of the world development agenda.” (TL)