Tacloban, PhilippinesUse Readable text for larger type, or zoom in on the pages.
Resilience Council
A door that opens again: June letter from the Resilience Council
Letter to members | 27 June 2026
Dear members,
This month, resilience became a little more measurable—and our responsibility to handle the evidence carefully became clearer. Our council’s RS-001 proposal is not yet a standard. It is an evidence-backed question about what should happen after a disaster: should insurance claims be decided within 30 days, should bridge funding be available within 10 days of a declared disaster, and what continuity-planning support can reach a micro business before the next disruption?
As of today, RS-001 has passed four of our five pattern tests: Volume, Frequency, Consistency and Spread. Corroboration is still pending. That fifth test matters. We need evidence strong enough to support a recommendation that can be understood, examined and acted on—not just a set of urgent stories that move us emotionally.
What moved this month
On 23 June, CF-001 passed the five-part pattern test. That is a milestone for the Cashflow Council, and a reminder that the Assembly’s work is connected: a business trying to reopen after a flood may also be waiting on a payment, a claim or a supplier. On 27 June, the Secretariat marked MSME Day. The United Nations estimates that micro, small and medium-sized enterprises make up about 90 per cent of businesses, account for 60–70 per cent of employment and contribute about half of global GDP.1 Those figures are large. The work of this council is to make sure that, when disruption comes, the small business inside those figures is not left to face the recovery alone.
The wider Assembly has now seated 1,000 members in 49 countries and received 2,756 reports from 50 countries. Within Resilience, 80 members from 37 countries have contributed 58 reports from 30 countries. Twenty-nine resilience reports arrived in the last 30 days. That is a meaningful increase in evidence, but it is not a reason to rush past verification.
The reports span different places and circumstances. The highest report counts are from the Philippines, with six, and Japan, the Netherlands and the United States, with four each. Mexico, Spain, Canada and Nigeria each have three. All 58 resilience reports concern disaster situations. The median amount at stake is approximately US$5,000. That is a median across reports; it is not a figure we should attach to any one member’s experience.
Our members also show why “small business” cannot mean one standard-sized operation. Forty-five per cent of reporting members said “Just me”; 41 per cent reported teams of two to nine; and 14 per cent reported teams of 10 to 49. A measure that works for a business with a dedicated continuity team may be useless to an owner who is also the person responsible for reopening the door.
One member’s report, carefully told
One anonymous report from the Philippines is part of this month’s evidence. It contributes to our understanding of how disaster affects small businesses and the work of reopening.
What we can say is specific enough to matter: the report belongs to a set in which every one of the 58 recorded situations is disaster-related, and it comes from a council whose members include solo owners as well as teams. For the person behind any one of those reports, “recovery” is not a chart. It is the practical interval between disruption and being able to serve customers, pay obligations and make the next decision. Our work is to establish what support can shorten that interval, and to prove the pattern before we recommend a rule.
What we are learning
First, the amount at stake is often within reach of being dismissed as too small for attention and too large for an owner to absorb easily. A median near US$5,000 describes a real exposure for a small operator, even though members’ circumstances differ. Second, preparation and recovery are linked. The Sendai Framework calls for disaster-risk reduction and business continuity to be integrated into business practice, including for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. UNDRR reports that SMEs bear about 75 per cent of business disaster losses and that disaster-risk reduction can reduce losses by up to a third.2 That makes continuity planning practical loss prevention, not paperwork for its own sake.
Third, a target such as “30 days” or “10 days” must be tested against the evidence and the real sequence of recovery. A decision deadline is not the same as a payment arriving. A bridge-funding offer is not useful if a micro business cannot access it promptly. We need to be precise about what each proposed time limit measures, what counts as a declared disaster, and what support should be available to owners who lack time and staff to navigate complex processes.
Our Reopen Map and the typhoon and flood readiness drive help turn that learning into something members can use. They also help us identify what is missing. The resilience evidence still needs corroboration, and we will keep distinguishing a confirmed pattern from an assumption.
What comes next
Through 2 July, the Platform Fairness Standard consultation remains open. Members who have not yet commented can still add evidence or identify a concern.
In July, the Assembly expects the second-quarter report, and the Cashflow Council’s draft CF-001 is scheduled for 21 July. These are wider Assembly milestones; RS-001 does not yet have a draft or ballot date.
For Resilience, the next work is to strengthen corroboration, keep gathering days-to-reopen evidence and improve the practical readiness material in the Reopen Map and typhoon and flood drive. On 18 May, we offered UNDRR our days-to-reopen data as a contribution to the Sendai Framework review. We will continue to treat that as an offer, not as an endorsement or acceptance.
I want to thank every member who reported an experience, checked a detail, or helped another owner think through what reopening requires. Our members are anonymous unless they choose a public seat.
Thank you for trusting this process with difficult experiences—and for helping us turn those experiences into evidence that can serve more than one business. We are not promising that a standard will prevent every loss. We are working toward a clear, testable expectation that owners should not have to navigate recovery alone.
With respect,
Gregorio YapChair, Resilience CouncilTacloban, Philippines