Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, has stressed that it is time to stop addressing development and humanitarian emergencies separately in an opinion piece on Project Syndicate. This, he writes, is because disaster-risk reduction lies at the nexus of development assistance, and humanitarian aid begins after a disaster hits.
Ban urges that starting our international calendar with the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR) in Sendai sends a clear signal that the world is ready to integrate its strategies...