Ban Ki-Moon meets Daasebre Oti Boateng
Mr Ban Ki-Moon, United Nations (UN) Secretary General, has met with Daasebre Oti Boateng, Omanhene of New Juaben and UN Commissioner on the International Civil Service Commission (ICSC) at the UN Headquarters in New York.
The meeting was to discuss the efficient and effective delivery of the United Nations mandate and programmes as a global workforce.
This made it imperative to harmonize conditions of service within the system, eliminate gaps in compensation packages that existed for staff assigned to non-family duty stations and enhance inter-agency mobility.
A press statement signed by Alhaji Razark El-Alawa, Media Adviser to Daasebre Oti Boateng and issued to the Ghana News Agency, said the General-Secretary attached great importance to the agenda of the commission, especially in the areas of harmonization and inter-agency mobility.
The statement said this was important in view of the high expectation that the people of the world and the member states had of the United Nations and the demands they placed on the staff to respond to escalating insecurity, conflict and humanitarian needs.
It said Daasebre Oti Boateng presented the synopsis of the new model he had developed in a paper titled “A Root-based Model for Globalization Disaster Reduction” to the Secretary-General.
It said the model integrated disaster preparedness and response with sustainable development through effective information and communication flow mechanisms.
“It provides a conceptual framework which makes communities the focal points of a strategy which responds directly to the dual challenge of the poverty–disaster nexus,” it added.
The statement said the model represented a major shift from the orthodox top-down approach to disaster risk reduction and sustainable development.
“Daasebre Oti Boating’s personal experience as a United Nations Commissioner, surviving the Santiago, Chile, 8.8 magnitude earthquake of Saturday, February 27, 2010 inspired him to develop this model to assist humanity to prepare for a better tomorrow,” the statement said.
It said the Secretary-General expressed appreciation for the work done by Daasebre Oti Boateng within the short period.
It will be recalled that the UN Secretary-General visited the commissioners and other UN staff in Santiago within one week of the Chilean earthquake on the 25th of March 2010 and later met with the President Bachelet and President-elect Pinera to express the solidarity of the UN and the international community with Chile and its people.
The statement said Daasebre would present the paper at the forthcoming World Forum at St. John’s College, Cambridge University, United Kingdom from 17th to 22nd August 2010.
It said Dr Pedro Basabe, Head of the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Risk (UNISDR)Regional office for Africa in Nairobi ,Kenya, has sent Daasebre Oti Boateng the following message: “We are pleased to receive from the UN Secretary-General an abstract of your valuable paper ‘A Root-based Model for Globalized Disaster Risk Reduction’.
It said the conceptual framework and key components of the innovative model would be useful to consider as a disaster risk reduction tool in Africa where poverty had increased vulnerability to disasters thereby reversing development activities.
Source: GNA