UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction

In 2012, The Nippon Foundation began cooperating with groups representing persons with disabilities in Japan and overseas in numerous international conferences on the theme of persons with disabilities and disaster response, to bring the importance of disability inclusiveness in disaster prevention to the attention of UN bodies and national governments. As a result of these activities, the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR), held in Sendai in northeastern Japan in March 2015, adopted the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, which positions persons with disabilities as important stakeholders in disaster prevention. At WCDRR, we provided support to improve access to information, including sign-language interpreting and note-taking, and making the conference venue and transportation facilities barrier-free, to encourage persons with disabilities to participate.