Prime Minister Hun Sen has asked all ASEAN members to help establish a cross-border assistance program for any state within the regional bloc dealing with a natural disaster.

“This is a point which should be considered as a package in discussions with our ASEAN leaders,” Mr. Hun Sen said at the opening ceremony of the Third ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Disaster Management and Fourth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response.

“This cross-border assistance has already happened, but it is not in our cluster of agreements.”

Mr. Hun Sen added that ASEAN leaders should meet to discuss the issue. If all ASEAN member states could help each other, he said, they may be able to limit the damage and casualties caused by such events.

As an example, he said if there was a fire on the Cambodian border with Thailand, it would be difficult for Cambodia to help but easier for fire trucks from Thailand to intervene.

Mr. Hun Sen also called on all neighboring countries to share information on how to handle natural disaster in order to reduce risk.

ASEAN Secretary-General Le Luong Minh said sharing information on approaching natural disasters and strategies on how to prepare a country’s populations will ensure a more “comprehensive and integrated approach in providing humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.”

Mr. Minh pointed out that Southeast Asia is one of the most natural disaster-prone regions in the world, and in the past decade alone, ASEAN has seen half the number of global disaster fatalities, with a total economic loss of almost $91 billion.

Disaster risk reduction, he said, has become more urgent than ever for the countries of the region. This week a typhoon tore through the Philippines, killing at least 11 people and displacing hundreds of thousands of others.

“A disaster in any member state will impact the overall regional supply chains, which may cause disruption in the production capacity in other ASEAN countries,” Mr. Luong Minh said. “Our initiatives to implement [theASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response] would directly contribute to and sustain ASEAN’s overall economic growth and performance.”

“For ASEAN, I hope that you agree with me that we are much more concerned about climate change while our Southeast Asia region is so prone to natural disasters,” Foreign Minister Hor Namhong said at the closing ceremony of the meeting.

He added that for developing countries, natural disasters triggered by climate change not only wreaked death and destruction on countries, but also were the root causes behind food insecurity, poverty and a lack of sustainable development.

From Khmer Times