President Tarja Halonen encourages delegates to keep gender issues high on the agenda ahead of the Cancun Global Platform on Disaster Risk Reduction. “The Global Platform in Cancun will be a crucial venue to reiterate the importance of increasingly involving women in disaster risk management. Women’ s active participation in Disaster Risk Reduction policies and implementation is essential if we want to reduce the number of people killed and affected every year by disasters and achieve the main goal of the Sendai Framework.“