Yesterday, Monday 18 November, President Danilo Medina received a visit from the Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Turkey, Besir Atalay who is attending the three-day III International Conference on the HOPEFOR Initiative in Punta Cana. Turkey, Qatar and the Dominican Republic are key to the coordination of the initiative that seeks to address deficiencies and improve civil-military coordination in support of the UN’s humanitarian emergency response system for large-scale natural disasters.
The initiative has come about given that the adverse effects of climate change have led experts to expect the number of situations that require humanitarian assistance to increase. The conference seeks to strengthen local, national, regional and international capacities of preparedness and response to natural disasters.
Over 200 people, ranging from government institutions to academics, researchers, civil society representatives and others working in the field of humanitarian assistance, focusing on civil-military coordination are attending the event. It seeks to further develop mechanisms at the regional and sub regional levels to facilitate and accelerate the assistance from neighbor to neighbor, especially in the use of military and civil defense assets.
The Hopefor initiative was first launched by the State of Qatar in June 2010 to improve the use of military resources and of civil defense assets in rescue operations. Other notable calls were made in the same year in order to pursue a more effective response to natural disasters; the most prominent were the Republic of Turkey and the Dominican Republic, in the high-level General Debate of the General Assembly of the United Nations on September 23, 2010. These three countries decided then to join forces in the presentation and implementation of the Hopefor to improve the effectiveness of the use of military and civil resources in natural disaster response.
The Dominican Republic is recommending the establishment of a Center of Excellence for the Caribbean Region based on the proposal, “Managing Management, Prevention and Mitigation of Disasters in the Caribbean.”
The conference is a follow-up to the First Regional Workshop on the HOPEFOR Initiative that was held from the 30th to 31st of January 2013 in the Dominican Republic with representatives from 13 countries in the Caribbean, including the host country and the Caribbean Disaster Management Agency (CDEMA).
http://presidencia.gob.do/comunicados/presidente-medina-recibe-visita-de-vice-primer-ministro-de-turqu%C3%ADa
http://hopeforinitiativedr.org/?page_id=25&lang=en