On Sunday, November 8^th, 2015 Dr. Jalal Dabeek, Director of the Urban Planning and Disaster Risk Reduction Center at An-Najah participated in the Arab Region Meeting on the Implementation of Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction which took place in Cairo.

The conference was over 3 days (from November 8-10, 2015) and was organized by League of Arab States and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction Regional (UNISDR).

The Arab regional Assembly aimed at discussing the outcomes of the 3^rd UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR) including the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR) to the Arab region 2015-2030.

The conference included a review of commitments and progress made on disaster risk reduction in the Arab Region, including 10 years of Hyogo Framework implementation.

Dr. Dabeek presented a research paper on the SASPARM 2 project, carried out by An-Najah in cooperation with the European Earthquake Engineering Center (EUCENTRE) and IUSS University in Pavia, Italy, within the FP7 group of European projects.

The conference’s outcomes:

-         Discussing the outcomes of the 3rd United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, including Sendai Framework and its priorities, shared, acknowledged with regional stakeholders

-         Reviewing and discussing the Arab Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction 2020 in light of Sendai's outcomes and other commitments declared in two consecutive Arab Conferences for DRR in 2013 and 2014

-         Monitoring mechanism for disaster risk reduction in the Arab region discussed and elaborated in view of Sendai Framework targets and proposed indicators as well as the SDGs monitoring plans in the Arab region

-         Launching the Arab Region Science and Technical Advisory Group on DRR

-         Re-introducing the Making Cities Resilient campaign with improved tools and proposed local indicators to measure progress on disaster risk reduction

-         Celebrating the Champion of “Local Knowledge for Life”, the theme of 2015 International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction.

Notes:

-         SASPARM aims at reinforcing international cooperation with neighboring countries to Europe in the fields of research. It aims, to reduce the risk of earthquakes in Palestine through improving the capabilities of Palestinian institutions and engineers in the field of seismic design of buildings and raising awareness on earthquake risk reduction.

-         Dr. Jalal Dabeek is also the Vice President of the National Committee for Disaster Risk Reduction and Coordinator for the SASPARM.