The theme of the 7th meeting was Rights based Community led Disaster Risk Reduction. In order to prepare and facilitate the discussions during the theme session the RCC member countries were requested to submit a brief country paper on initiatives on Community-based disaster risk
reduction (CBDRR) in the country.

This paper, 'Implementing national programs on community-based disaster risk reduction in high risk communities: Lessons learned, challenges and way ahead' aims to summarize the National initiatives on CBDRR in RCC member countries as presented in the Country Papers and highlights the challenges identified by the member countries at the RCC 7 Meeting for institutionalizing and up scaling CBDRR.