After powerful Pacific cyclone, rescue effort begins in Vanuatu

Vanuatu’s president made an emotional appeal for international assistance on Saturday after his island nation was hit by a calamity of a cyclone, wreaking devastation in what is feared to be one of the region’s worst weather disasters. Aid workers say eight people are confirmed dead in Vanuatu and the death toll is expected to rise much higher. Meanwhile, residents in Vanuatu hunkered in emergency shelters for a second straight night. Aid agencies were scrambling for information and preparing to send teams to Vanuatu, whose main island is home to more than 65,000 people, with a UN disaster assessment and coordination team expected to arrive late Sunday.

I stand to appeal on behalf of the government and people of Vanuatu to the global community to give a lending hand in responding to these very current calamities that have struck us.

Vanuatu’s president Baldwin Lonsdale

As the island nation of Vanuatu struggles in the wake of Cyclone Pam, global leaders are meeting in Japan for a U.N. conference on disaster prevention. Japan has pledged to provide $4 billion over the next four years to reduce the number and the suffering of disaster victims worldwide. The disaster, which struck just before the conference opened, emphasized the need for global and regional solutions to the challenges of disaster risk reduction and management. Some of those solutions involve recognizing women’s central role in disaster response and recovery. Despite some progress in empowering women to take charge during disasters, gender-based perceptions of women and girls as weak or inferior have isolated them from planning and decision-making processes, according to the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.

The Pacific is fighting for its survival. Climate change has already arrived.

Christopher Loek, president of the Marshall Islands, a tiny archipelago near the equator

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