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Category archive for: Japan

Japan’s government has politicised a generation with its constitutional reforms

Japan’s government has politicised a generation with its constitutional reforms

Published by Editor on January 5, 2016

Written by Oana Burcu.

As the Japanese government continues to press ahead with controversial changes to its “peaceful constitution”, it continues to fuel domestic protests and fails to get full endorsement from the members of its own ruling party. Prioritising foreign policy while dismissing domestic opposition is hardly a wise course, and Shinzo Abe’s government seems not to have fully anticipated the political risks.

Trouble has been brewing for a while, but rose to a new level in the summer of 2014 when a man self-immolated in Tokyo in June 2014 to protest the reinterpretation of Article 9, which was intended to renounce war permanently. Continue reading Japan’s government has politicised a generation with its constitutional reforms

Disaster, Development and Urban Risk: a comment on the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction

Disaster, Development and Urban Risk: a comment on the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction

Published by Editor on March 23, 2015

Written by Pauline Eadie.

The World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR) was held in Sendai, Japan from 14-18 March 2015. The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) organized the conference. The objective of the conference was to facilitate a post-2015 framework for disaster relief. The result of the WCDRR was the non-binding Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR). ‘Post-2015’ is now embedded in the lexicon of development practitioners as a signifier of the post Millennium Development Goal (MDG) era.  2015 also heralds the end of the ten-year Hyogo Framework for Action: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disaster (HFA). The HFA listed five priorities for Action that involved scaling up institutional and cultural awareness of safety, risk and resilience ‘at all levels’. A key theme was preparedness, including early warning.

Continue reading Disaster, Development and Urban Risk: a comment on the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction