National Contingency Plan for Floods and Landslides

The National Contingency Plan for Floods and Landslides is a national sectoral plan of Rwanda. Its overall objective is to support the timely, consistent and coordinated response to anticipated floods and landslides thus effectively minimizing the impact of the floods and landslides on human population, livelihoods, lifelines, properties and the environment. According to the document, although the emphasis of the Plan is on floods and landslides, the Plan has an in-built flexibility that allows it to embrace other hazards such as drought, heavy winds and lightning should they occur anywhere in the country in association with heavy rains.
The Plan aims to ensure food security during the disasters. Namely, it provides for farmer sensitization on flood mitigation measures involving crop/variety selection and conservation farming; providing awareness on flood and landslide mitigation measures to populations likely to be affected by floods in the country so as to reduce the impact on food security; providing food to affected population (rice, maize and kawunga); assessing rapid food and landslides security needs and area mapping; and providing relief food operations after floods.
Increasing the resilience of livelihoods to disasters is the main objective of the Plan. To this end, the document aims to assess and disseminate information on the disasters; to provide health care to the affected population in order to prevent and reduce excess mortality and morbidity due to floods/drought, and promote a sustainable healthy life; to reduce mortality and morbidity cases due to WASH-related (water, sanitation, and hygiene) diseases triggered by the envisaged floods in Rwanda through the provision of safe water and sanitation services to the affected population; conduct surveillance of transmittable livestock diseases; to provide compliant shelter and limited facilities to aid the school to function during the period of the floods; and to provide an efficient and effective information management and emergency communication mechanism for response.
The overall responsibility of coordination is with the Ministry of Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs in general. The District and Sector Disaster Management Committees are the local coordination and implementation bodies. In addition, all cooperating partners such as the UN agencies, donors, non-governmental organisations both local and international are called upon to provide assistance during the emergency. The Plan will be implemented at three stages i.e. before the emergency, during and after.