At the request of UNISDR, the United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service (UN-NGLS) had invited civil society to propose speakers and participants in the official segment of the upcoming WCDRR. The process produced a long-list of several hundred proposals from across all sectors of civil society. UN-NGLS convened a very broad and inclusive committee of 16 experts and delegates from representative groups to compile eight shortlists from this large pool of proposed participants. The IRDR Executive Director had been requested to make himself available for this task, too. The final decision on participants would lie with the UNISDR secretariat.

After a three-week call for proposals, the committee drew up, during three sessions in the period 8-10 January 2015, a shortlist of candidates for two roles as speakers in high-level multi-stakeholder partnership dialogues on ”Mobilising Women’s Leadership in DRR” and “Inclusive DRM: Governments, Communities and Groups Acting Together”. Furthermore, shortlists were prepared for participants in ministerial roundtables on “International Cooperation and Global Partnership for DRR”, “Reducing Disaster Risk in Urban Settings”, “Reconstructing after disasters: building back better”, “Public Investment in DRR”, and “Governing Disaster Risk: Overcoming Challenges”, as well as for those requesting funding for participation as civil society representatives from organisations from around the globe; all eight nomination processes were limited to those individuals who had submitted their candidature.

The final selection from the eight shortlists will be carried out by the UNISDR, who will seek to achieve a proper balance of geographic, gender, age and other aspects among the sponsored participants.