WTAD 2023 | November 5, 2023 #GetToHighGround

5 November is World Tsunami Awareness Day (WTAD) around the world.
The WTAD was established in 2015 by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), which promotes the #GetToHighGround initiative on social media.

This year's initiative has a new objective: "Fighting inequalities for a disaster resilient future", this is the main topic that WTAD 2023 activities will focus on. Poverty, inequalities and vulnerabilities are the variables that, in the event of a tsunami, increase the emergency response gap, especially for the most vulnerable population such as women and people with disabilities.

In UNDRR Chief Mami Mizutori's video message for World Tsunami Awareness Day 2023, she highlights how the consequences of a tsunami can push the most vulnerable people into poverty and exacerbate inequality:

"...the poor and people living in inequality are often the hardest hit by tsunamis, with consequences that linger long after the waters recede. And it is not only the poor who suffer the most. Tsunamis also exploit the inequalities created by social barriers, especially for women and people with disabilities.

For example, in four villages in Indonesia, it was found that the 2004 tsunami killed four times more women than men. And in Japan, after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, authorities reported that people with disabilities accounted for nearly 25 per cent of the deaths. ...

The goal of fighting inequality in disasters is not to see everyone affected equally, but to ensure that no one is affected at all ... ".

"And we cannot achieve that future unless we adopt an approach to disaster risk reduction that involves the whole of society and leaves no one behind."