The Africa Youth Advisory Board (AYAB) leads an event at the Africa Regional Platform for DRR

Children and youth are on the frontline of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and resilience because of their agility and ability to absorb knowledge and communicate it rapidly to their peers. The Sendai Framework recognizes the critical role played by stakeholders. In particular, the role of children and youth as agents of change that should be given the space and modalities to contribute to DRR, in accordance with national practice.

This year’s Africa Regional Platform for DRR takes place at a challenging time with a serious health crisis being propagated by the COVID-19 pandemic across the continent and the world at large. At the platform, AYAB will lead a session on Children and Youth consultations to explore ideas, lessons, and good practices that have worked in reducing disaster risk and promote resilience in the context of Covid-19.

The session aims at exploring a) improvements to increase the role of youth in mitigation, preparedness, and response; b) bankable activities that can be adopted to accelerate the youth leadership in DRR and climate change adaptation for resilience; and c) valuable lessons articulated by AYAB from her support to respond to COVID-19 in Africa.

The Sendai Framework Voluntary Commitments (SFVC) online platform allows stakeholders to inform the public about their work on DRR. The SFVC online platform is a useful tool to know who is doing what and where for the implementation of the Sendai Framework, which could foster potential collaboration among stakeholders. All stakeholders (private sector, civil society organizations, academia, media, local governments, etc.) working on DRR can submit their commitments and report on their progress and deliverables. Good practices and achievements will be highlighted through the online platform.