One Festival in Manila

O     N     E

One is a rock music festival originally planned for April 2010 but was shelved due to the postponement of the Hazards Mapping and Environment Summit (HMES) 2010 - a sister project.

The HMES project is now revived and rescheduled to December 8-16, 2014, before the March conference in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture of the United Nations called the UN Third World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction.

On the fifth day of the hazards mapping and environment conference, One will be staged at Rizal Park, Manila beginning at past 5:00 pm Saturday, December 13, 2014 until the next day Sunday December 14, 2014.

One of the unique features of One is the use of biometric tickets, the technology for which will be negotiated up to final contract with a provider from the United Kingdom.

One is a concern of Center for Human and Society (Centre di Humanes et Societas, Inc.) a non-profit organization registered in the Philippines. The organizer's advocacy is pushing for and actively participating in the creation of resettlement sites far away from the ground zero where thousands of Tacloban City residents died as well as building Memorials for those that died in the places where the remains of those that passed away during the Category 5 Tropical Cyclone Haiyan codenamed Yolanda. These memorials will be where the relatives of those that died can express grief for their family, loved ones and bosom friends.

The targeted resettlements are within Leyte or off-island, with a choice of several areas that offer jobs, education for the children as well as other amenities.

One was conceived many years ago in 1987 after the period of transition in government in the Philippines called the People Power Revolution.

Related sites:

One Festival Page at Facebook

One Festival Event - Facebook

The Hyogo Framework for Action on Disaster Reduction

With all the resources the United Nations wields, there will always be issues on whether its issuances, promulgations and declarations of various names and types meet with the compliance of its member states on a ratio of at least 1:50. However, the more realistic figure may be 1:150 or higher. That for every 150 issuances, only one out of 150 member countries religiously abides by its issuances must be painful to admit.

But this does not harm the United Nations in any way, for whether the members act like delinquents, the UN shall continue to exist as long as the members keep paying their dues.

About two years from this date, the latest framework on disaster risk reduction made by the UN in a grand event called Second United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, will expire. It has to give way to a so-called successor framework.

At that point, the UN will have to come up with the successor framework, hopefully containing new material that will detail how to mitigate risks of calamities like Yolanda. The Third United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction to replace the Hyogo Framework for Action for Disaster Risk Reduction, will be held in Sendai, Japan, several prefectures away from where the predecessor Hyogo Framework was crafted.

If only for the occurrence of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the second and now the third World Conference is being in the same country one more time. However, following what transpired in that country during the earthquake-tsunami and in the Philippines, during and in the aftermath of Yolanda, it can be said that the framework promulgated at the Hyogo Prefecture conference is more or less dead, killed by its obsolescence.

This Hyogo framework died before its successor was born. Thus again, we make this call, prior to or coinciding with the Sendai conference, that the United Nations considers pushing through with our strongly advocated focused disaster and environmental hazards summit.

Why the need to host a focused disasters and environment hazards mapping conference.

The question of whether the various United Nations platforms for disaster risk reduction has done anything to prevent even at least half, or better, more than 50% of the casualties of recent disasters can only be answered in the negative. More > >

Reducing occasions for corruption

S. K. Cruz promotes the campaign of Transparency International, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, as well as other anti-corruption agencies in the drive vs. graft and corruption in the public sector as well as in the private sector. Please click here.

It is anticipated that the burgeoning movement against corruption will succeed in drawing into its folds millions of members in the months and years to come.