RAMALLAH, West Bank — During its weekly meeting on March 7, the Palestinian Cabinet decided to form a National Disaster Risk Management Committee headed by Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah. The committee is tasked with forming a technical team representing ministries, governmental agencies, and the private and academic sectors. This team will establish a National Disaster Risk Management Center, and a law will regulate the work of the center.
The institutional and legal framework of the disaster risk management system has been set by a national team of 35 representatives of governmental agencies. An international advisory team, represented by the Istidamah Development Sustainability Company that brought an international expert from Iceland, started working with the national team in February 2015. Both teams also worked alongside Palestinian legal expert Mahmoud Dudin, who drafted the final version of the framework, which took a year and a half to be completed.