World disaster report 2001, focus on recovery

As un/natural disasters become ever-more frequent, aid dollars and development gains are being washed away. Catastrophe is no longer a brief dip on the curve of development but a danger to the process itself. The poorest of the poor are becoming more vulnerable, trapped in vicious cycles of structural poverty and marginalization beyond their power to change. Some places prone to continual un/natural disasters are becoming lawless and a threat to security.

Four things must happen simultaneously, if the cycle of disasters is to be broken and recovery is to take root: programme emergency relief as the beginning, not the end, of increased commitment, inject the 'risk dimension' into development in all disaster-prone regions, reform funding strategies to help bridge the relief-recovery gap, seize the advocacy opportunity relief provides to tackle disasters' root causes.