UN General Assembly
2005

The recent occurrences in Asia, the Caribbean and the southern United States of devastating storms and hurricanes, and in Africa, of terrible droughts, demand a more coordinated and rational approach internationally to issues of climate change, disaster preparedness, and post-disaster rehabilitation. By and large, there have been ad hoc national, as distinct from international, approaches. To the extent that international mechanisms exist for prompt and appropriate relief work, they are clearly inadequate for the tasks at hand. This is undoubtedly an area in which the United Nations and one or more of its agencies or associate institutions ought to be able to make a significant difference to the well being of real flesh-and-blood people. After all, natural disasters respect no territorial boundaries or power blocs; calamities from nature have a studied ideological neutrality. They are the same sad songs heard from ancient times by emperor, vassals 14 and clown; and in modern times, increasingly by the rich and the poor. But they afflict the poor more disastrously than any other group. This matter demands