Disaster relief

The international community is the trend, increasing for increased humanitarian assistance for natural disasters. Without going any further, the United Nations has sought to solidify in recent years to an emergency fund and a framework for multilateral cooperation aimed at providing rapid and effective assistance to countries hit by a tsunami, earthquake, flood or any other sudden tragedy. Governments in many countries have contributed significant amounts, although, as usual, few fully meet the commitments related to the allocation of those items.

Also many governments have encouraged the establishment of national funds or cooperative structures for such purposes. You enable and warehouses for food staples are with aircraft, personnel in a position to guard and military groups with humanitarian preparedness. These are advances that have enabled it to act with a certain efficiency in some extreme situations of recent times. Of course we can only consider these actions as successes when compared with earlier missions filled with uncoordinated, slow, lack of resources and neglect (if not unwillingness of corrupt and totalitarian rulers) that allowed thousands of people suffer without any help from the rigors of nature.

Neither can or should doubt that this policy of international cooperation has to be further developed in the same line. Millions of people lose their home and family overnight, wiped out entire countries are incapable of regeneration.

However, it is worth noting some risks associated with these events and could corrupt the overall sense of effective cooperation, including for emergency humanitarian aid. Dump international cooperation towards emergency assistance is often forgotten pockets of persistent poverty in many regions.

The media are very sensitive to a tsunami, for instance, provided they are new and moving images. Meanwhile, months and years pass without remembering pandemics and miseries that are charged the same lives in silence. Nobody talks about malaria, AIDS or drought Central while the news is the tsunami. And this, in turn, passes into the trunk of memories at the time that the figures and images are repetitive. Governments and the general public respond in similar terms to the shocks of natural disasters that frequently occur.

Many social organizations of donor countries continued effort trying to educate its population with a pedagogy of cooperation that do understand the complexity of this to carry it out. Within this process includes giving priority to the continued cooperation and development that attacks the very roots of poverty. It is people falling in the importance of long-term programs that include the production of basic goods, promoting employment, improving health conditions and education, building infrastructure, etc.. Projects completed by the native people with strong social participation, transparent and with a high degree of efficiency for the environment where they operate. That is tantamount to giving weight to the normality of everyday society. Put another way, also a way to fight defensively against natural disasters, as a strong and structured society can face them with greater assurance.

But audiences are still more sensitive to timely disaster dramatic consequences, with stark images. The pain causes sudden meeting and many supporters are achieved and excessive warmth. Moments are also some unscrupulous organizations have used to attract resources and partners.

We have a global challenge ahead, get the disaster relief structure is strengthened to the point that is little we improvise when intervention becomes necessary. But without the sustained cooperation to develop suffer any loss. Equally important is to act in an emergency, such as maintaining a responsible, consistent and rigorously about the myriad of causes of calamities on the planet.