ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book provides a critical understanding of the ways the major institutions of the organized world community have responded to grave and widespread traumatizing events. It examines idealism and commitment, despite cynicism and despair, and despite the realization, emerging from situations such as those in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, that humanity has failed to learn the lessons and to honor the commitments made after World War II. The book describes the responses of the international community, both intergovernmental and non-governmental, to the world's traumatized victims. It explains the some status of efforts of the United Nations system as well as of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) relating to traumatic stress within the general framework of prevention, intervention, and postvention. The book looks at the activities of the United Nation family of agencies and NGOs through the prism of traumatic stress.
