Summary record of the second session of the Resilience Council

I. Proceedings

1. The Resilience Council held its second session on 21 March 2026 in two Open Table sittings. The Asia-Pacific sitting took place from 06:00 to 07:30 UTC. The Europe/Africa/Americas sitting took place from 16:00 to 17:30 UTC. The same agenda was used in both sittings, with contributions recorded separately and brought together for this summary record.

2. The Chair, Gregorio Yap, presided over both sittings. The attendance register recorded 28 Resilience Council members from 20 countries. The Council’s membership was geographically distributed; members participated under the Assembly’s practice of anonymity unless they chose to speak publicly. The speakers identified below are participants included for this staged record and are not associated with named businesses.

3. The agenda was: (a) opening and confirmation of the purpose of the session; (b) review of the call for evidence on agenda item RS-001, “Reopen Standard” (RC/RS/2026/1); (c) consideration of the evidence submission received to date, including RC/RS/2026/S.1; (d) discussion of the continuity checklist in RC/RS/2026/20; (e) agreement on evidence questions and immediate follow-up; and (f) date of the next session.

4. The Chair recalled that the session was an evidence-gathering and agenda-development meeting. The Council had not completed a pattern test, drafted a proposed standard, or asked the Assembly to vote on a measure. No speaker was asked to identify a business or disclose commercially sensitive information. Members were reminded to distinguish direct experience from general opinion and to submit supporting material through the established channels.

II. Discussion

1. In opening the Asia-Pacific sitting, the Chair said that RS-001 concerned the conditions that enable small businesses to reopen and continue operating after a declared disaster. He framed the discussion around three questions already identified in the agenda: the timeliness of insurance claim decisions, access to bridge funding, and practical continuity planning support for micro businesses. He said that the Council’s present task was to establish what members had experienced and what could be corroborated, rather than to endorse a remedy in advance.

2. Ms. Lani Villanueva of Tacloban, Philippines, said that an interruption could create costs before a business had enough information to make a formal claim. She described the difficulty of knowing which records to preserve immediately, how to document damage when access to a site was restricted, and where to seek advice while ordinary services were disrupted. She urged the Council to ask about the sequence of events after a disaster, not only the final claim outcome. She did not identify a business or provide a claim amount.

3. Mr. Haruto Sato of Sendai, Japan, said that continuity planning guidance would be more usable if it were designed for owners with limited time and staff. He suggested asking members whether they had a written plan, whether it named an alternative way to contact customers and suppliers, and whether anyone had helped them test the plan. He cautioned that a checklist alone might not show whether a business could actually put its plan into effect.

4. Ms. Meera Nair of Kochi, India, said that the timing and form of assistance could matter as much as its stated availability. She proposed that future evidence collection distinguish between a payment or facility being announced, an application being accepted, and funds becoming usable. She also asked the Council to record whether a respondent had been able to continue paying staff and essential suppliers during the interruption, while avoiding collection of personal or financial details not necessary to the inquiry.

5. In discussion of the submitted material, the Chair noted that RC/RS/2026/S.1 was an evidence submission, not a substitute for a set of comparable incident reports. Members were invited to identify which parts of that submission could be checked against additional accounts or documentary evidence. The session did not make a finding about the general prevalence of any particular delay or loss. The Council’s March register recorded no reports filed under the Resilience Council, and participants agreed that this limited the conclusions that could responsibly be drawn at this stage.

6. Ms. Ayesha Rahman of Sylhet, Bangladesh, said that members should be able to report a disruption even where it had not produced an insurance claim. She noted that a business might close temporarily, lose access to stock, or be unable to receive deliveries without having a claim to submit. She recommended that the evidence form allow a respondent to state that insurance was not applicable, unavailable, or not pursued, rather than treating the absence of a claim as evidence that no disruption occurred.

7. Mr. Kofi Mensah of Accra, Ghana, said that the Council should ask whether continuity advice reached owners before an incident, during the immediate response, or only afterwards. He proposed recording who provided the advice and whether it could be acted upon with the resources available to the business. He emphasized that members should not be asked to speculate about whether any one measure would have prevented a loss; the record should first establish what guidance was received and what the owner was able to do.

8. Ms. Sofia Alvarez of Valparaíso, Chile, said that disruption could affect several links in a business’s operating chain at once. She recommended that evidence collection include interruption to power, communications, transport, premises, and access to payment services, while allowing respondents to select only the categories relevant to their experience. She supported a simple timeline field showing the start of disruption, the point at which the business could resume some activity, and the point at which ordinary operations resumed, if known.

9. In the Europe/Africa/Americas sitting, the Chair restated that the Council was considering a possible future standard, not a rule already agreed by the Assembly. He said that any eventual proposal would need to be based on a consistent pattern across reports and corroborating material. The three proposed elements of RS-001—claim decisions within 30 days, bridge funding within 10 days of a declared disaster, and continuity planning support for micro businesses—were therefore treated as questions for evidence and analysis, not as established requirements or findings of the Council.

10. Ms. Elena Petrova of Plovdiv, Bulgaria, said that the phrase “claim decision” should be examined carefully. She suggested asking whether respondents received a decision, a request for further information, an acknowledgement, or no substantive response, and whether the respondent understood what would happen next. She cautioned that an elapsed-time figure without a description of the communication received could conceal materially different experiences.

11. Mr. Daniel Okafor of Enugu, Nigeria, said that the Council should distinguish between emergency assistance and bridge funding linked to a claim or recovery process. He proposed that the evidence form ask what kind of support was sought, what documentation was required, and whether the support could be used for immediate continuity needs. He said that members should be free to report that no application was made, including where the process appeared inaccessible or the available information was unclear.

12. Ms. Rosa Castillo of San Juan, Puerto Rico, said that an owner’s ability to resume operations might depend on the recovery of suppliers, customers, and local services as well as the condition of the business’s own premises. She supported asking whether a disruption had affected a single operation or a wider area and whether the respondent had corroborating information from another source. She emphasized that the Council should not treat a single account as proof of a general practice.

13. Mr. Peter Mwangi of Nakuru, Kenya, said that continuity support should be described in practical terms. Potential questions could cover whether an owner had received help identifying essential activities, maintaining customer contact, protecting records, or arranging an alternative operating method. He asked that the Council avoid assuming that every micro business had access to formal continuity plans or specialist advisers.

14. Ms. Nurul Hidayah of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, said that evidence collection should be accessible to members with different levels of documentation. She recommended accepting a clear account of events while inviting, but not requiring, supporting materials such as correspondence, notices, or dated records. She also proposed that the Council explain how confidential information would be handled and encourage members to remove identifiers that were not needed for the inquiry.

15. Mr. Jean-Baptiste Laurent of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, said that a future review should consider whether the same respondent had more than one form of disruption and whether recovery occurred in stages. He supported recording partial reopening separately from full recovery. He added that a member should not be required to assign a precise monetary value where records were unavailable, and that any estimate should be identified as an estimate rather than a verified amount.

16. Across both sittings, members agreed that the evidence process should ask about volume, frequency, consistency, spread, and corroboration as separate questions. They considered that a high number of accounts alone would not establish consistency, and that reports from more than one country would not, by themselves, establish that the same practice was present in each place. Participants supported retaining enough contextual information to understand the account while avoiding unnecessary disclosure of identity or business details.

17. The Chair summarized the discussion of RC/RS/2026/20, “Before the storm — a continuity checklist for owners.” Members supported keeping the checklist as a practical resource while the evidence inquiry continued. They did not decide that the checklist constituted a Council standard, nor did they certify that it would suit every sector or location. Suggestions for revision were to be submitted to the Chair and Secretariat with a brief explanation of the intended audience and any material change proposed.

18. Members also discussed how to avoid conflating resilience with the ability of an individual owner to prepare for every possible disruption. The Chair said that the inquiry should record the circumstances surrounding an account, including whether useful information or support was available, without assigning blame to a member who lacked a plan or could not follow one. The Council agreed that the subject required evidence about both business-level preparation and the conditions that affected recovery.

III. Conclusions and decisions

1. The Council confirmed that RS-001 remained an evidence agenda item. The three elements set out in the call for evidence remained under consideration; no element was adopted as a Council position at this session.

2. The Council agreed to continue collecting distinct incident reports and supporting material. Members should identify the event and relevant dates where known, describe the interruption and recovery sequence, distinguish first-hand experience from information received from others, and indicate what corroboration may be available. Members should not name their businesses in reports or include unnecessary personal or commercially sensitive information.

3. The Council agreed that future evidence prompts should distinguish claim acknowledgement, requests for information, substantive decisions, and payment; distinguish announced assistance from assistance received and usable; and allow a respondent to report that insurance or funding was not pursued or did not apply. These were instructions for evidence-form development, not findings about any insurer, lender, provider, or public authority.

4. The Council agreed to keep continuity planning within the scope of RS-001 and to ask about the practical support received, the timing of that support, and whether the respondent could use it. It would consider partial reopening and full recovery as distinct points in the account where the respondent could identify them.

5. The Council made no finding on the frequency or spread of delayed claims, bridge funding gaps, or inadequate continuity support. It did not complete the five-part pattern test, draft a proposed fix, commence a public consultation, or refer a proposal to an Assembly ballot. Those steps would require further evidence and subsequent review under the Assembly process.

IV. Action items

V. Next session

1. The next Resilience Council Open Table session was scheduled for 21 April 2026, with sittings at 06:00 UTC for Asia-Pacific and 16:00 UTC for Europe/Africa/Americas. The Secretariat would circulate the agenda and participation details in advance. The proposed focus was review of the revised evidence prompts, the status of submissions, and any further member accounts relevant to RS-001.

2. The Chair thanked members for keeping the discussion specific to the evidence and for distinguishing personal experience from general conclusions. The session closed at 07:30 UTC and 17:30 UTC, respectively.

Recorded by: Founding Secretariat
Approved for publication by: Gregorio Yap, Chair, Resilience Council