ABSTRACT
Fifty to sixty developing countries are extremely susceptible to natural catastrophe. It is easy to show that citizens of the poor nations run the highest risk of death in natural disasters. One major initiative in favour of the Third World was the establishment on 14 December 1971 of the Office of the United Nations Disaster Relief Co-ordinator (undro), which is based in Geneva, although it has a Liaison Office at the UN headquarters in New York. The mandate of undro charges it to mobilize and co-ordinate relief efforts in order to supply rapid and effective aid to countries stricken by disaster, most of which are in the Third World. The calamity is worthy of analysis principally for what it tells us about the nature and quality of assistance to the Third World and about the relationship — or the lack of one! — between disasters and development.
