UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called upon the international community on Thursday to learn lessons from the past Tsunami calamities and to raise public awareness of the importance of prevention and mitigation.

The secretary-general made the appeal in his message to mark the fifth anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, which devastated the northeast coast of the country, on March 11, 2011, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

Dujarric said: "The secretary-general once again extends his condolences to the people of Japan. He stresses that after Fukushima, it became clear that we are in a new era in which technology and natural disasters can combine to create danger on a previously unimaginable scale."