General site search

A law does no good sitting on a shelf.

A major milestone took place this week with the signing of a new national disaster management law in Cambodia by His Majesty the King Norodom Sihamoni. Cambodia is currently Chair of the ASEAN Committee on Disaster Management, and the adoption of the new law emphasizes the country’s commitment toward strengthening and regulating disaster management and response across its territory.

Cambodia’s new draft law on disaster management, if passed in its current form later this year, is set to be one of the most comprehensive disaster management laws in the Asia Pacific region for addressing the facilitation of international assistance.

After over a year of research, interviews and consultations, the final reports from the projects on ‘Legal Preparedness for Responding to Disaster and Communicable Disease Emergencies’ in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam have now been published.

Since November 2008, the IDRL Programme has been collaborating with the Cambodian Red Cross Society and the World Health Organization with support from the Asian Development Bank to assist the Government of Cambodia on legal preparedness for international disaster assistance and the control of epidemics.

Like many countries in Southeast Asia, Cambodia suffers from its share of disasters. Many of these, such as flash flooding and droughts, occur in and around the famous “rice bowl” region of the Mekong Basin on an annual basis, ruining valuable crops as well as lives.

Nestled in the mountainous regions between India and China, the mostly cool climate and rugged terrain of the Kingdom of Bhutan is in fact a hotbed of seismic activity - up to 1600 tremors have been recorded in a single six-month period. Its topography also poses the risk of landslides, flash floods, forest fires and flooding from glacial lake outbursts.

Bangladesh is one of the world's most disaster-prone countries. With a population of more than 157 million, it is also one of the most densely populated countries in the world.

On 24 April and in the weeks that followed, the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory building in Bangladesh generated global headlines as survivors and bodies were pulled from the rubble where the building once stood in Savar, a sub-district outside the capital city of Dhaka.

Bangladesh is one of the most disaster prone countries in the world.