United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), Core Contribution 2021-2025

DRR is strongly rooted in Switzerland's bilateral and multilateral cooperation. The Swiss International Cooperation Strategy 2021-2024 keeps DRR as one of its priority themes and dedicates a specific goal to DRR (Unterziel 6), under the strategic objective on human development. Furthermore, DRR continues to be one of the four core themes of the Swiss Humanitarian Aid.

UNDRR headquarters are located in Geneva and contribute to the important role of the International Geneva ecosystem in the DRR global policy agenda and dialogue.

UNDRR underwent a change process to align its organisational structure to the objectives of its Strategic Framework. The new organizational structure strengthened UNDRR's regional presence.

UNDRR organized the 5th Global Platform for DRR in Mexico in 2017, and the 6th Global Platform in 2019 (GP2019) in Geneva. The GP2019 was hosted and co-chaired by the Swiss Government and attended by more than 3,000 participants from 182 countries. The GP2019 highlighted the relevance of DRR for sustainable development as evidenced by outcome documents of the 2019 High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development and the UN Climate Action Summit.

UNDRR launched the 2019 Global Assessment Report on DRR, which provides evidence to facilitate risk-informed decisions and implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

Between 2017 and 2020 UNDRR produced 13 "Words into Action" guides to support implementation of the Sendai Framework on key aspects such as developing national DRR strategies, land use and urban planning, and children and youth engagement.

UNDRR signed memorandums of understanding with UNDID and UNFCCC to better mainstream DRR into sustainable development and to better integrate DRR into climate change policy. UnDRR also published two guidance notes to integrate DRR into development strategies and humanitarian action.

UNDRR responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with an engagement strategy and produced a report with early lessons learned for disaster risk governance.

Switzerland has host and co-chair of the GP2019 was crucial to bringing the topic "economics of DRR" more into the focus of the GP agenda as well as "DRR in fragile and displacement contexts". The Co-Chairs Summary written by UNDRR and Switzerland and the Global Assessment Report served as a basis for the UN Secretary General's special report on the implementation of the Sendai Framework, which in turn positively affected the negotiations of the UN resolutions on DRR of the 74th UN General Assembly.

Switzerland also contributed to the improvement of the Sendai Monitor and the quality of data visualisation and transparency of the monitoring process.

UNDRR Strategic Framework 2022-2025 pursues the following four strategic objectives (SO) and enabling objective (E):

• SO1. Countries use quality risk information and analysis to reduce risk and inform development decisions.
• S2: DRR governance strengthened at global, regional, national and local levels.
• S3: Catalyze investment and action in DRR through partnership and engagement.
• SO4: Mobilize Member States and stakeholders through advocacy and knowledge sharing to make DRR central to sustainable development
• E1: Strengthened organizational performance.

UNDRR will concentrate on providing enhanced support to Member States to accelerate the implementation of the Sendai Framework and contribute to risk-informed sustainable development. Within the four Strategic Objectives, UNDRR will ensure better activity convergence across its organizational units, and between headquarters and regional offices, to focus on the following four accelerated action areas:

i. Linking the DRR agenda with the climate agenda.

ii. Scaling up communication and public advocacy for building highest political traction and commitment to DRR.

iii. Generating rebust evidence, innovation and good practices on disaster risk to inform decision-making processes.

iv. Advancing sustainable financing for DRR.

In its dialogue with UNDRR, Switzerland advocates for increased importance to:

1. Coherent approach to disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation and environmental sustainability.
2. Building on DRR and climate change adaptation as a bridging role of the humanitarian - development - peace nexus.
3. Continuing to stregthen disaster risk governance on all levels, supporting the inclusion of the most vulnerable at risk population, including people at risk of displacement, and continuing to advocate for a whole-of-society approach to DRR and increased leadership of women and the youth.
4. Supporting improved observation, modelling and forecasting for better anticipation, preparedness and long-term prevention.
5. On COVID-19 & DRR: build on lessons learned from the pandemic with its cascading effects, better link the health and DRR community for improved multi-hazard risk management, and strongly advocate for Build Back Better & greener.

2019: 5th
2020: 9th

Sweden, Germany, Japan, Norway, Italy, USA, Republic of Korea, Finland, European Commission, Australia, Czech Republic, China, Luxembourg, Canada, Spain, Ireland and Kazakhstan.

• Donor meetings every six months and Support Group meetings (Geneva-based missions) every two months.
• Group of Friends of DRR in New York.
• Synergies with CREWS, where UNDRR is one of three implementing partners.
• Synergies with WB-GFDRR, where UNDRR is a permanent observer of its consultative group.