On 21 December 2020, the General Assembly (GA) adopted its yearly Resolution on Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR). In the document, the GA urges States to conduct inclusive and multi-hazard disaster risk assessments that consider the ramifications of the Covid-19 pandemic as well as climate change projections. The Resolution has the merit of using the coronavirus…

In 2016, at its seventy-first session, the General Assembly (GA) decided to include in the provisional agenda of its seventy-third session an item entitled ‘Protection of persons in the event of disasters’ and it invited governments to submit comments concerning the recommendation by the International Law Commission (ILC) to elaborate a convention on the basis…

On 1 July 2020, the UN Security Council (SC) unanimously adopted Resolution 2532 (2020) on the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic across the world and its impact on international peace and security. The adoption of the Resolution was preceded by intense activity on the topic by other UN organs. On 30 January 2020, the covid-19…

The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) recently published the 2019 edition of the Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR), a biannual publication aimed at reporting on worldwide efforts to reduce disaster risk. The 2019 report is divided into three parts. Part I (Chapters 3-6) focuses on the Sendai Framework’s “broadened view of the…

At its 71st session, in 2019, the International Law Commission (ILC) decided to include the topic of ‘Sea-level rise in international law’ in its programme of work, based on the recommendation of the Working Group on the long-term programme of work. The initiation of the Commission’s work on this topic is accompanied by the establishment of an open-ended…

Between 16 and 19 December 2019, the UN General Assembly adopted four resolutions focused on strengthening the coordination of UN humanitarian and disaster relief assistance actions. These are Resolution 74/118 on ‘Strengthening of the coordination of emergency humanitarian assistance of the United Nations’;  Resolution 74/115 on ‘International cooperation on humanitarian assistance in the field of natural disasters,…