T

he world is seeking a platform needed to deal with post-disaster reconstruction and recovery programs, as well as approaches to help make communities more resilient in dealing with future disasters when the World Reconstruction Conference commences in Geneva, Switzerland, on Tuesday.

Taking place as part of the third session of the Global Platform on Disaster Risk Reduction, the four-day event features over two thousand political leaders, community representatives, international donors, private sectors and experts, all given a field of opportunities to foster partnership, streamline approaches and plan for a future in which disaster risk is perceived to be on the rise.

The World Bank, as the joint organizers with the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Risk (UNISDR) and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), is pushing all stakeholders to set the framework that might be liable for carrying out post-disaster reconstruction programs.

“The conference is a pivotal moment, an opportunity to agree on a global road map for more coordinated, better financed, higher-quality reconstruction after disaster,” World Bank Finance, Economics and Urban Development Department director, Zoubida Allaoua, said during a media conference at the Geneva Press Club on Monday.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is scheduled to deliver an opening keynote speech.

Allaoua will be one of the speakers at the event, which is scheduled to take place at the International Conference Center.

“No country is immune, but it is poor countries who are most vulnerable and who find their development prospects set back years by disasters,” she said.

Speakers from Indonesia will be National Agency for Disaster Management chairman Syamsul Maarif, the agency’s former deputy chief in charge of rehabilitation and reconstruction Bakri Beck, and former finance minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, who will address the forum in her capacity as World Bank managing director.

It will be the third session of the biennial Global Platform on the DRR since 2007, where the idea of its organization was first raised during the World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan, 2005, a year after the deadly earthquake-triggered tsunami rocked the Indian Ocean’ regions, including mostly-impacted Aceh in Indonesia.

Known as the Hyogo Framework for Action, the Kobe meeting has tasked national stakeholders with setting up strategies for as far out as 2015, to be implemented in disaster management, with the objectives to make the nations and communities resilient to disasters.

Various challenging issues at the Geneva meeting will be presented in different formats, which include high-level policy panels, innovation competition, thematic sessions and roundtable discussions.