In 2001, the General Assembly decided to maintain the observance of the International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction (resolution 56/195, 21 December 2001), as a vehicle to promote a global culture of natural disaster reduction, including disaster prevention, mitigation and preparedness.

"Disaster Risk Reduction Begins at School" International Day for Disaster Reduction 2007 We have a moral, social and economic obligation to act now in building resilient communities and nations. Last year saw the launch of a global awareness campaign entitled “Disaster risk reduction begins at schools”. Its aims to mobilize Governments, communities and individuals in making disaster risk an integral part of school curricula, while ensuring that school buildings are built or retrofitted to withstand natural hazards. Disaster reduction is everybody’s business. All of us can do our part to raise awareness and reduce our vulnerability to future hazards. I urge all concerned -- Governments, civil society and the private sector, international financial institutions and other international organizations -- to invest in disaster reduction and to step up implementation of the Hyogo Framework, with concrete measures to reduce vulnerability. On this International Day, let us renew our dedication to this mission. - Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General

In the last few years tens of thousands of children have perished because their schools did not protect them: they died in earthquakes, floods, windstorms, mudslides and wildfires. They died because their schools were not built properly, or on the right kind of land, or high enough above the flood plain, or designed to survive the most likely natural hazard. The fragile bodies recovered from the wreckage of a fallen school represent not just a human tragedy but evidence of thoughtlessness or needless ignorance in the communities around them.

So the UNESCO and UN international secretariat for disaster reduction have, for the last two years, led a world-wide effort to make schools safer, and to make them places to begin education about safety, resilience and risk reduction. (The UN ISDR launched last year a biennial campaign under the theme “Disaster Risk reduction Begins at Schools” with two main objectives: to make school safer and to integrate disaster risk reduction into school curricula).

• GDRC: Disaster Management
• GDRC: Environment and Disasters
• GDRC: Urban Environmental Management

• Resolution 44/236 of 22 December 1989: International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction
• Resolution 56/195 of 21 January 2001: International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction
• More information and resources from the Secretariat of UN ISDR: United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction