A strong commitment to IDRL advocacy on the African continent has emerged from the 7th Pan-African Conference of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which convened in Johannesburg on October 19-23.
The Conference brought together the leaders of 53 African National Societies to discuss humanitarian priorities on the continent and to set out a plan of action for the next four years. In the realm of disaster preparedness, the discussions addressed measures to build communities’ risk reduction capacities as well as ways to strengthen partnerships between National Societies and their governments. On this point, there was an expression of the need for active engagement with governments on IDRL, so that laws can be enacted to allow the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement as a whole to deliver its most efficient relief efforts in disasters.
A special working group was dedicated to the issue of IDRL on October 22. Fernanda Teixera, Secretary-General of the Mozambique Red Cross, and Boubacar Diabi, Principles and Values Coordinator of the Cote d’Ivoire Red Cross, presented papers on how IDRL was being taken up by their National Societies. Commission participants noted that “many governments still have major gaps in their laws on disaster management, and in particular on international relief. National Societies, through their good relations with governments, have sometimes been able to obtain necessary legal facilities but there is a need for this to be made systematic. Good law can institutionalize this goodwill to make it more effective.”
The outcome of the Conference was a resolution adopting the Johannesburg Commitment. In the field of legal preparedness for disasters, National Societies committed themselves, to “advocate that Governments use the Guidelines for the domestic facilitation and regulation of international disaster relief and initial recovery assistance to strengthen Africa’s laws on international disaster assistance, making appropriate use of our roles as auxiliaries to the public authorities in this regard.”