The League of Arab States, in cooperation with the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), opened the second Arab Regional Forum on Early Warning Systems and Disaster Preparedness Monday in Tunis.
The Forum is hosted by the Arab States Broadcasting Union (ASBU) in partnership with several United Nations agencies and regional and international organizations concerned with disaster risk reduction, preparedness, and humanitarian response.
The three-day Forum (12-14 October) brings together representatives of Arab countries, regional and international organizations, and technical partners. Saudi Arabia is represented by a delegation headed by National Center for Meteorology CEO Dr. Ayman bin Salem Ghulam, according to the Saudi Press Agency (SPA).
The Forum aims to review progress in developing multi-hazard early warning systems across Arab countries, identify priority challenges and gaps, strengthen regional cooperation, and exchange expertise, knowledge, and best practices among Arab countries and technical partners.
It also seeks to support the implementation of the Early Warnings for All initiative by enhancing integration among the four pillars of early warning systems: disaster risk knowledge; monitoring and forecasting; warning dissemination and communication; and preparedness and response. The forum also aims to strengthen national and local capacities to translate warnings into timely and effective early action to protect lives and livelihoods.
The Forum explores the role of technology, innovation, artificial intelligence, and digital tools in improving risk monitoring, forecasting, and warning dissemination, enhancing the participation of local communities and relevant stakeholders, and ensuring that early warning systems reach all segments of society. It also seeks to identify priorities for joint action and the partnerships needed to accelerate progress in early warning, preparedness, and resilience across the Arab region.
Launched by the United Nations Secretary-General in 2022, the Early Warnings for All (EW4All) initiative set an ambitious global goal: ensuring every person on Earth is protected by people-centred, multi-hazard early warning systems by 2027. It advances Sendai Framework Target G.
As the initiative approaches its five-year milestone in 2027, the global focus is shifting from establishing systems to making sure they are operational, sustainable, nationally owned, inclusive and able to address increasingly complex, interconnected and cascading risks.
The Arab region faces growing and interconnected risks. Water scarcity, prolonged droughts, extreme heat, flash floods, tropical cyclones, sand and dust storms, earthquakes, sea-level rise and coastal erosion are occurring alongside rapid urbanization, population displacement and protracted crises.
The Second Forum builds on the First Arab Forum on Early Warning Systems and Disaster Preparedness, held in Cairo in December 2025. Its outcomes will feed into an Arab regional synthesis report, to be published in 2027. That report will inform a global report and a high-level event in mid-2027 that concludes the EW4All regional-to-global consultative process.
