Regional organizations launch Redhum, the new humanitarian website for Latin America and the Caribbean

October 26, 2007, Panama City - Today at the Global Symposium on Humanitarian Information in Geneva, OCHA announced the launch of a Regional Humanitarian Network for humanitarian actors and organizations. It will facilitate easy access to the voluminous natural disaster and complex emergencies information in the Latin America and the Caribbean region through a Website in Spanish, www.redhum.org.

One of Redhum's goals is to provide easy and organized access to quality and up-to-date humanitarian information from the region that will allow for better preparation and response in the event of a disaster. The site will provide, inter alia, the latest situation reports on emergencies, calendar of activities (trainings and meetings), on-line contact lists of Who is doing What Where (3W), maps, and vacancies. Redhum, as a website and a network, also brings about best practices in terms of response capacity of the relief community through the timely and transparent dissemination of information on all humanitarian emergencies.

Redhum is an interagency initiative based on agreements with the Secretariat for the Coordination Center for the Prevention of Natural Disasters in Central America (CEPREDENAC) and the Regional Disaster Information Center for Latin America and the Caribbean (CRID); it is supported by the Regional Interagency Working Group for Risk, Emergencies and Disasters (REDLAC) and works closely with national disaster management authorities through SG-CEPREDENAC. Six Redhum information assistants have been posted so far in Central America within national disaster management authorities to facilitate information exchange, reinforce the humanitarian network and strengthen capacity building. A further extension to South America and the Caribbean should provide better coverage in 2008.

Inspired from other information management initiatives such as Southern Africa and Colombia, Redhum has been developed in complementarity with ReliefWeb, the global information system; Redhum is funded by the Spanish International Cooperation Agency (AECI), the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the Government of Kuwait, and OCHA.

For more information, please contact: Max Bonnel, Humanitarian Affair Officer of the Regional United Nations Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, tel. +507 317-1748, bonnel@un.org