INTRODUCTION
On May 28-29, 2009, CONRED, CEPREDENAC, and the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement, with the support of the Embassy of Switzerland, convened a workshop on response and protection in situations of natural disaster in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.
The objectives of the workshop were:
- to raise awareness and build support for a human-rights based approach to disaster response at both the regional and national levels;
- to facilitate the integration of human rights in disaster management (risk reduction, preparedness, response, and early recovery), with special attention given to the situation of the internally displaced;
- to provide a general overview of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee’s (IASC) Operational Guidelines on Human Rights and Natural Disaster; and
- to identify next steps for each country.
The workshop brought together 35 participants from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala representing national authorities, the United Nations, Central American regional organizations, National Societies of the Red Cross, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and representatives from the human rights sector.
The participants identified concrete steps to integrate a human-rights-based focus at the regional level in the strategic framework of CEPREDENAC for 2009-2011 as well as specific activities to be adopted at a national level in order to incorporate human rights and protection in all of the phases of disaster response. The agenda, the working group reports, and the list of participants are included in the annexes to this report.
