Amphan was not an exception. The first nine months of the COVID-19 pandemic coincided with 84 floods, droughts, tropical cyclones and other disasters around the world (Walton & van Aalst, 2020). These events are a reminder that climatological, hydrometeorological and biological hazards can compound each other; disaster and public health outcomes go hand in hand.
Countries and regions must build resilience to multiple hazards while ensuring the health of their communities. Recent global guidance, such as the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, further requires that they do so while following the principles of human rights and gender equality.
The following is a qualitative and descriptive analysis that shows the connections between disaster risk reduction and health, in existing policies at the regional and subregional levels in Asia and the Pacific. It also reviews how these policies address human rights and gender equality, which are drivers of vulnerability to both disaster and health risks, at the intersection of the two arenas. While policies have increasingly interwoven health and disaster risk reduction, most miss human rights and gender issues in this interlocking policy nexus.
