UN General Assembly
2005

hope and expectation that we shall deliver. On the morning of 26 December 2004, Sri Lanka and several other countries around the Indian Ocean region woke up to a natural disaster of unprecedented magnitude. Towering tsunami waves struck two thirds of the coastal areas of our island nation, leaving in its wake death and destruction on a scale hitherto unknown by the world. Moved by the enormous scale of that calamity, Governments, the United Nations and other international organizations, civil society organizations and countless well-wishers across the world rushed to help my country and its people to recover, rehabilitate and rebuild. It was a magnificent gesture of human solidarity. Citizens of the world reached out beyond the confines of geopolitical and other man-made barriers in one magnificent gesture of human generosity. That rekindled in us new confidence in the power of peoples acting in unison across the world to move Governments to act in the best interests of humankind for a new and better world. On behalf of my people and my Government, I