Dis­as­ter re­sponse ex­perts, mil­i­tary of­fi­cials, and hu­man­i­tar­i­an agen­cies from across the Amer­i­c­as will par­tic­i­pate in the four-day Mech­a­nism for Dis­as­ter Co­op­er­a­tion Ex­er­cise (MECODEX 2025) which gets un­der­way in Guyana on Mon­day.

The ma­jor re­gion­al dis­as­ter re­sponse sim­u­la­tion ex­er­cise is aimed at strength­en­ing in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion and im­prov­ing na­tion­al pre­pared­ness for flood-re­lat­ed emer­gen­cies and is be­ing or­gan­ised in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­fence Board (IADB) and the Civ­il De­fence Com­mis­sion (CDC) of Guyana.

The ex­er­cise brings to­geth­er dis­as­ter re­sponse ex­perts, mil­i­tary of­fi­cials, and hu­man­i­tar­i­an agen­cies from across the Amer­i­c­as to test and re­fine co­or­di­nat­ed strate­gies in a sim­u­lat­ed flood sce­nario. It is de­signed to rig­or­ous­ly eval­u­ate the op­er­a­tional readi­ness of lo­cal agen­cies while fos­ter­ing re­gion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty in dis­as­ter risk man­age­ment.

“To host the lead­er­ship of the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­fence Board is a great ho­n­our and au­gurs well for our civ­il-mil­i­tary co­or­di­na­tion. We wel­come the for­eign del­e­ga­tions and look for­ward to a suc­cess­ful ex­er­cise here in Guyana,” said  CDC Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al,  Colonel Nazrul Hus­sain, who em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of the event.

“This is more than just a drill. It is a strate­gic op­por­tu­ni­ty to strength­en in­ter-agency co­or­di­na­tion, eval­u­ate our re­sponse mech­a­nisms, and build the con­fi­dence of those en­trust­ed with safe­guard­ing lives dur­ing dis­as­ters,” said CDC deputy di­rec­tor gen­er­al, Lt. Col. Mark Thomas.

MECODEX 2025 is sup­port­ed un­der the frame­work of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) and the Con­fer­ence of De­fence Min­is­ters of the Amer­i­c­as (CD­MA), with the IADB act­ing as the per­ma­nent sec­re­tari­at of the MECODEX mech­a­nism.

The ini­tia­tive is part of a broad­er ef­fort to en­sure that in­ter­na­tion­al as­sis­tance, when need­ed, is both time­ly and ef­fec­tive, while ful­ly re­spect­ing the sov­er­eign­ty of mem­ber states.

“Plat­forms like SICODE, de­vel­oped by the Mil­i­tary In­sti­tute of En­gi­neer­ing in Brazil, al­low par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries to sim­u­late re­al-world chal­lenges and fine-tune their re­sponse pro­to­cols. This ex­er­cise is strict­ly hu­man­i­tar­i­an in na­ture and un­der­scores the val­ue of re­gion­al pre­pared­ness,”  said Colonel José Car­los Di­az Tor­res of Brazil.

The ex­er­cise, now in its fourth it­er­a­tion, was pre­vi­ous­ly host­ed in Pe­ru (2024) and Ecuador (2023), fol­low­ing its ini­tial ex­er­cise as a vir­tu­al table­top event in 2022.

GEORGE­TOWN Guyana, May 19, CMC –

CMC/gt/ir/2025