Disasters: There Must Be a Better Way

$ A few days after the latest cyclone ravaged Bangladesh, Mother Teresa arrived from Calcutta with 1,600 lbs. of relief supplies. It took a day for officials in Dhaka to decide how to deal with her. Since the Nobel Peace laureate had flown in on a commercial flight, some officials argued that the materials needed to go through customs. About a month earlier, when Iraqi Kurds began fleeing en masse from Saddam Hussein's soldiers, the Iranian army struggled to cope with thousands of dying children. They were treated with antibiotics instead of rehydration salts, a more effective means of staving off life-threatening diarrhea.

Improvements in communications and transportation have made the world's disasters no easier to handle. Even with better warning systems, reactions can be snail-paced, ill-considered and futile. The first days following a catastrophe are the most critical for survivors. The demand for speed, however, is precisely what the world's complex disaster-relief network is not geared to meet. Says Nicholas Hinton, director general of Britain's Save the Children Fund: "Disaster relief is proving to be inadequate and ineffective. It should be reformed as a matter of urgency."

But how? Major powers such as the U.S. are reluctant to take on the duty, let alone the cost, of intervening unilaterally. Should the United Nations assume the chore? In the wake of more than 30,000 Kurdish deaths and perhaps as many as 140,000 killed in Bangladesh's April 30 storm, many reformers pin their hopes on the organization. "Only the U.N. has the power and resources to mobilize the international community, but too often it has been hamstrung by a lack of clear leadership and coordination," argues Lynda Chalker, the British Minister for Overseas Development. Britain hopes to win agreement on the need for a U.N. agency with clout at the July Group of Seven economic summit in London.

Even though the U.N. is theoretically above politics, reformers are far from unanimous about using it. The track record is not encouraging. Notes Francois Dumaine, a logistics expert for the French volunteer medical team Medecins sans Frontieres: "It takes the U.N. a month and sometimes longer to organize rescue operations." Adds Serge Telle, a technical adviser to France's Secretary of State for Humanitarian Affairs, Bernard Kouchner: "The U.N. relief agencies are plagued with chronic financial difficulties because of the West's indifference. On the one hand, we say everything has to go through the U.N.; on the other, we settle everything at the bilateral level."

The U.N. already has agencies dedicated to handling emergencies: the High Commissioner for Refugees, for instance, and the Disaster Relief Coordinator's office. But the criteria of the former confine it to aiding persecution victims who cross borders, while the latter commands few resources and little authority. Officials in afflicted nations often bypass the U.N. and appeal directly to foreign governments and private charities such as Britain's Oxfam.