ABSTRACT
To focus on disaster relief in dealing with natural hazards is like expecting the Red Cross to stop a war. While humanitarian concern for relieving suffering in time of crisis deserves encouragement, its effects are largely palliative, and it has limitations for international action toward natural hazards. Nevertheless, disaster relief is the one way of responding to such hazards in which all nations have thus far found it convenient to join, and a Disaster Relief Office was launched by the United Nations General Assembly in 1972 without a dissenting vote. Although the UNDRO is likely to remain for some time the principal agency of international cooperation in coping with hazards, it ought to be regarded as only one avenue for cooperative action among nations.
