ABSTRACT
The impoverished surviving victims of national disasters make up the vast numbers of refugees, and they have been the main beneficiaries of relief programs. Scores of intergovernmental agencies, dozens of private voluntary organizations, more than one hundred national governments, and even media organizations now form an interconnected relief system for refugees, of which the Red Cross is only one part. But relief efforts are rarely mobilized unless poverty is compounded by either natural or man-made disasters. Despite the complications imposed by the political crosscurrents in Southeast Asia, the relief agencies themselves felt they had been able to do their job remarkably well. In January 1980 the National Cambodia Crisis Committee was established under the sponsorship of the Indo-Chinese Refugee Action Center, created a year earlier by a consortium of private foundations. Somalian crisis made the Cambodian dilemma look like an easy one to solve.
