With this, the importance of building resilience in
human security was once emphasized by focusing
on HIV/AIDS in Asia and Africa.6 During and
after emergencies and disasters, ‘building resilience’
can be far more important as these events
affect both human and material resources. We
cannot prevent all new threats resulting from
emergencies or disasters from happening, so our
focus should be on building communities’ resilience
to such existing and potential threats so that
the negative impact on their lives, livelihoods,
and dignity is reduced. At a more practical level,
we can observe that some countries and communities
are able to successfully limit death tolls and
human suffering caused by natural disasters and
other crises while others—even those with very
similar socio-economic and geographic conditions—
are not. Why are those places more resilient
to disasters? One explanation is that areas
that have been more successful are those whose
communities are already mobilized and engaged
in their own protection.