International Agreements on Disaster Risk Management Based on World Conferences, Successful or Not: A Review Study

At the end of the 19th century, international communities have realized the necessity of global planning and cooperation. Accordingly, worldwide meetings have been organized for several years. This study aims to assess the achievement of predetermined objectives by international conferences in the field of risk management.

The search for articles and documents was done using several keywords of "international meetings", "Sendai", "Hyogo", and "Yokohama" in Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, Cochrane Library, Science Direct, Google Scholar databases. Also, the risk management domain websites such as FEMA, UNISDR, and EM-Date were searched.

Three Disaster World Conferences have been organized, hosted by Japan: Yokohama 1994, Kobe 2005, and Sendai 2015. They proposed strategies and prioritized actions for managing disaster risk, reducing the risk of disasters, and coping with disasters. In the second and third conferences, as requested by the United Nations (UN General Assembly), the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) helped as the coordinating body. 

Reducing the risks of disasters is a global issue, which needs international cooperation. Therefore, all countries should take steps to achieve disaster risk reduction goals. Since declaraions, documents, resolutions, and conferences do not impose an obligation on countries in this regard, the success rate of the programs is dependent on voluntary international cooperation. Moreover, while we do not expect that outcomes of these international agreements related to disaster risk reduction be achieved at the scheduled time plan, strengthening the international cooperation of the countries to facilitate the improvement of actions and programs would be effective.