In early October, high-level emergency management officials from 15 member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) attended a workshop in Johannesburg to discuss how their countries and SADC improve their disaster preparedness.
Among the topics discussed were presentations by the Federation on its “Zambezi River Basin Initiative,” designed to increase community resilience in seven Southern African countries, and the IDRL Guidelines.
In the workshop’s conclusions, the member states identified a number of priorities for action by their own governments and the SADC secretariat. Among these was the “need to . . . encourage Member states to explore the incorporation of International Disaster Response Laws (IDRL) as relevant in their respective countries, which would greatly facilitate disaster response, especially the trans-boundary movement of relief assistance and the control of the spread of disasters and pest infestation.”