By Anastasia Maylinda, ADRRN; Alejandro Posada, ALNAP; and Vishal Pathak, AIDMI

At the Regional Humanitarian Partnership Week (RHPW) 2025, an Innovation Spotlight session marked a significant milestone: the launch of the 225th issue of Southasiadisasters.net and the celebration of two decades of uninterrupted local learning and knowledge co-creation in Asia. Convened and presented by the AIDMI (All India Disaster Mitigation Institute), ALNAP (Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance) and ADRRN (Asian Disaster Reduction and Response Network) the session reflected on how a modest regional newsletter has evolved into one of the Global South’s most enduring, practitioner-driven disaster risk learning platforms in the past two decades.

Opening the session, AIDMI traced the journey of Southasiadisasters.net from its beginnings in 2005 to a living archive of more than 2,500 articles written by over 2,000 contributors across Asia and beyond. Over the years, the platform has documented the region’s shift from relief-centric responses to more holistic approaches encompassing preparedness, risk reduction, climate resilience, and recovery. At its core, the publication has consistently placed affected people, local practitioners, women leaders, and small businesses at the centre of mutual learning. The publication has addressed inequality, injustice, and inhumanity in humanitarian action and learning in Asia.

In her keynote remarks, Anastasia Maylinda, Secretary General of the Asian Disaster Reduction and Response Network (ADRRN), emphasised that the strength of Southasiadisasters.net lies in how it treats all forms of knowledge as equally valuable. She highlighted that regional resilience is built not only through technical expertise but through humility, listening, and trust among communities, practitioners, and policymakers as southasiadisasters.net is done with AIDMI’s care and nurturing.

Alejandro Posada from ALNAP reflected on the broader humanitarian learning system, noting that despite the abundance of experience and evidence, too little local knowledge influences decision-making, and southasiadisasters.net is an exception. He underscored that platforms like Southasiadisasters.net are essential because they challenge dominant narratives about whose knowledge counts and must be supported. In a sector facing rapid change and constrained resources, locally led, co-created learning is not optional—it is foundational to adaptation and system change, as southasiadisasters.net has shown.

Closing the session, Mihir R. Bhatt, Director of AIDMI and Editor of Southasiadisasters.net, reflected on the publication’s deeper contribution: reducing learning and knowledge inequality. Over twenty years, the platform has worked quietly but persistently to democratise knowledge by bringing grassroots voices alongside scholars and policymakers. From women vendors adapting to extreme heat, to youth volunteers responding to floods, to local officials rethinking early warning systems, each article demonstrates how resilience is built through everyday action. The agenda is set by the contributors. All ideas are welcome, and diversity is celebrated. Clarity is not achieved at the cost of missing or supressing a voice or point of view.

As Southasiadisasters.net enters its third decade, the way ahead is clear: expand local languages, amplify youth voices, embrace visual and digital storytelling, and continue challenging learning injustice. In a warming, risk-intensive world, the future of humanitarian learning must be locally led. This milestone reaffirmed that local knowledge is not peripheral—it is the foundation of a more just, resilient, and humane Asia. It was agreed by over 70 participants to take this ahead with full force, step-by-step, and start local learning and knowledge sessions to represent in the 2026 RHPW.