The paradigm of integrated risk management and its economic, social and environmental framework have had a remarkable evolution from theoretical point of view in the last decade. Particularly, the contribution of the Network for Social Studies on Disaster Prevention in Latin America (La RED) and from a large number of researchers in the region –that have addressed the issue of disaster from the perspective of development– have to pose the need to overcome the purely humanitarian and technocratic approaches, on which management has been developed in the past, in order to achieve real progress in the context of developing countries. This new vision, even if differential and incipient, has been adopted by the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, becoming in some cases a new development policy and a subject of particular interest for multilateral agencies, as the IDB, the World Bank and UN agencies. The Institute for Environmental Studies (IDEA) of the National University of Colombia, Manizales, recently made a System of Indicators of Disaster Risk and Risk Management for the Americas, with the support of the IDB, in order to initiate a monitoring of risk management in the region. This system included among other indicators the Risk Management Index (RMI), which made a first measurement of the performance and the effectiveness of risk management, addressing four subcomponents or courses of action. This document presents some reflections on the subject and the results of the RMI for Latin America and the Caribbean
