MINSK, 14 December (BelTA) – The Prevention, Preparedness and Response to Natural and Man-made Disasters in Eastern Partnership countries – phase 3 (PPRD East 3) was officially launched on 14 December, BelTA learned from the press service of the Belarusian Emergencies Ministry.
The event was held via videoconferencing and brought together representatives of rescue services of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. Head of the Disaster Preparedness and Prevention Unit of the Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations of the European Commission Julia Stewart-David greeted the participants of the event.
The program is meant to help the partner countries develop civil protection systems for protection from natural and man-made disasters and strengthen potential for disaster risk prevention, preparedness and response to natural and man-made disasters at the international, national, and local levels. The first two phases of the program with the budget of over €10 million were running in 2011-2019.
The Belarusian Emergencies Ministry took part in three priority areas of the program: support for the recipient country, European Union's approaches to the principle of voluntary participation in civil protection, and raising awareness of emergencies. With the help from experts, Belarus finalized the new law on fire safety and adopted it on 11 November 2019. The law sets forth the main categories of volunteering organizations. Belarus also drew up several regulations (the procedure of Belarus' implementation of activities on support for the recipient country).
The main goal of phase 3 of PPRD East is to increase the resilience to natural and man-made disasters in the Eastern Partner Countries by means of accomplishing three objectives: to build sustainable capabilities of the partner countries' respective civil protection institutions for disaster risk prevention, preparedness and response to natural and man-made disasters; to strengthen interlinkages between all relevant governmental actors and civil society stakeholders as well as the scientific community; and to enhance regional coordination, institutional and operational cooperation between the Union Civil Protection Mechanism and the Eastern neighborhood countries.
The program will be implemented by the consortium consisting of the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency as the lead agency, the Emergency Services Academy Finland, the Ministry of Interior of the Slovak Republic – Section of Crisis Management, the International Center for Environmental Monitoring, and the Italian Red Cross.
Belarus is keen to implement the activities envisaged in the program that provide for exchanging information in crisis management, cooperation in specialist training, the development of regional cooperation between civil protection services, and joint work in building up capacities in risk management and emergency preparedness.
The PPRD East 3 program is set to run for four years.
