In the aftermath of the Bam earthquake (Iran), on 26 December 2003, there has been a renewed commitment on behalf of various Government and UN agencies in Iran to intensify efforts towards securing Iran against future disaster risks.  The Government-UNDP Five-year National Joint Programme is the flag-ship program of UN/UNDP in Iran for reducing disaster risks.  The program objectives are aligned with the broad outcomes identified by the UNDAF/UNDP Country Programme for the Islamic Republic of Iran (2005-2009) in the area of disaster risk management. The latter’s emphasis on building strong disaster risk management capacities, especially through garnering community awareness and participation; enhancing coordination mechanisms amongst stakeholders at the local and national levels; and developing systems for effective disaster risk management at all levels to develop a strategy for reducing disaster risk in Iran.  

Effective and efficient disaster risk management needs multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral approaches that are not limited to ensuring structures, but also utilizes approaches that require effective, efficient and result-oriented integration, and promote cooperation and coordination with a wide range of actors and stakeholders. Communication, networking and facilitation skills are also necessary skills for managers and experts that enable them to get optimum results of integration and partnership with various actors, partners, stakeholders and beneficiaries of the program at horizontal and vertical levels. Without appropriate communication/facilitation skills, partnership, integration and participation, cannot be achieved.  

Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) has been identified as the technical implementing partner in the program document of this 5-year joint program to provide the necessary technical assistance, consultancy inputs and training. Three main component of this program are to:

1. Develop and make disaster risk and risk management easily accessible for advocacy and decision making in Iran, to link disaster risk management policies, by working at the local and intermediate level and demonstrating how disaster management actions are implemented.

2. Pilot risk management projects across horizontal (across sector) and vertical risk management stakeholders (national, intermediate and local level) with a focus on one natural hazard (earthquake) in urban context.

3. Facilitate knowledge networking in the area of disaster risk management in the central and southwest Asian region.

Summary report:

To achieve the objectives of the project several activities have been considered:

	Activity		Location	Duration	Status
1.	Study Tour		Nepal	30 Jan -4 Feb 2007	Finished
2.	Facilitation, communication and networking in the meetings and events		Tehran	12-14 Feb 2007	Finished
3.	Safety of medical infrastructure		Gourgan	12-14 Mar 2007	Finished
4.	Improvement of building permit process		Kerman	22 - 26 Jul 2007	Finished
5.	Urban Earthquake risk management		Kerman	4-8 Mar 2007	Finished
			Gourgan	25 Feb -1 Mar 2007	Finished
6.	Community-based earthquake preparedness and education		Kerman	27-31 May 2007	Finished
			Gourgan	20-24 May 2007	Finished
7.	Earthquake Emergency Response Plan		Kerman	12-16 Aug 2007	Finished
			Gourgan	19-23 Aug 2007	Finished
8.	Networking on Specific instances of knowledge exchange for application in addressing specific disaster risk management problems in sub region		Tehran	3-5 Aug 2008	Finished
9.	Sub regional Disaster Risk Management Initiative		Mashhad	3-5 Sep 2007	Finished

 The first four activities are intended to ensure multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral approached in addressing the needs of a more effective and efficient earthquake risk management plan on a national level.  

The next three activities are being implemented in two demonstrated cities: Kerman and Gourgan, which are among the highly disaster prone cities of Iran. The aims of these activities are to strengthen the capacity of the local actors and stakeholders to reduce earthquake risk and develop an action plan for earthquake risk management and emergency response, especially through promoting community based approaches and public awareness.   

The last two are sub-regional activities aimed to strengthen the regional capacities for disaster risk management in Central and Southwest Asia. The first workshop is intended to train a pool of knowledge facilitators, improve networking and knowledge sharing especially via providing inputs to the sub-regional websites, enhance public relation, exchange experiences and information among the participant countries and worldwide. The later is a follow up workshop to the forum of the “ Sub-regional Initiatives for Natural Disaster Risk Management”, held in March 2003 to discuss the framework of this project. The aim of this workshop will be to identify the “Action Plan for Drought and Earthquake Risk Management” in the sub-region and to provide opportunity to review and incorporate the consensus of the participant countries into draft reports on the sub-region drought and earthquake risks.