Global

The COVID-19 pandemic represented a major public health challenge and had serious economic and social impacts on origin, transit and destination countries, as well as on migrant workers and their families and on businesses and their operations. This informative note presents policy options in order to ensure comprehensive social protection for migrant workers in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

This policy brief provides information and identifies a number of key recommendations to assist governments and other stakeholders in designing COVID-19 policy responses that can help to ensure the protection of migrant workers, as well as to inform responses for the protection of refugees and those displaced working in countries other than their own, differentiated by gender as appropriate and based upon relevant international labour standards, and ILO guidance and good practices.

As individuals and organizations in localities across the globe mobilize to support those displaced by war, conflict, and climate disasters, meeting immediate needs of migrants and refugees is critical. At the same time, building the infrastructure needed to support and engage migrants and broader communities in the long term is essential to ensure strong life outcomes beyond the initial welcoming period.

The Santiago Network was established at COP25 in Madrid as part of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage (WIM) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change with the objective of “catalysing technical assistance of relevant organisations, bodies, networks and experts, for the implementation of relevant approaches for averting, minimise and addressing loss and damage at the local, national and regiona

The UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) are collaborating to develop a new tracking system to record and analyse hazardous events and disaster losses and damages.

The new system will be fully aligned with the Sendai Framework and related SDG targets and indicators, and interoperable with the WMO Catalogue of Hazardous events which will provide authoritative records of weather, climate, and water-related hazardous events at the national and regional levels. 

The Words into Action guide offers practical guidance to help government authorities integrate disaster displacement and other related forms of human mobility into regional, national, sub-national and local DRR strategies in accordance with Target (E) of the Sendai Framework, to revise or develop DRR strategies by 2020. It provides basic background information and highlights the various roles DRR and DRM can play in reducing, preparing for and responding to disaster displacement.

The guide is primarily intended to support the work of:

This policy paper presents key considerations and calls for action to ensure countries in contexts of fragility, conflict and violence are supported by all relevant EWS stakeholders and especially donors, humanitarian and development agencies and civil society actors.

WMO has been long calling for the creation of a sustainable capability to coordinate enhanced support to humanitarian agencies from the United Nations and other organizations in case of natural disasters.

The UN Secretary-General launched in March 2022, the Early Warnings for All initiative which called for every person on Earth to be protected by early warning systems within five years by 2027. 

In November 2022, the UN Secretary-General launched at COP27 an Executive Action Plan to implement the initiative and designated as the co-leads the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR).