Contemporary International Relief System Is A Comparative Study

This year, 2006, marks the 30^th anniversary of the Tang Shan earthquake and the 20^th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The former is a natural disaster while the later in a sense belongs to a manmade incident. However, some lessons can be drawn from both them. For instance, sluggish response, absence of professional relief equipments, chaotic dispatches and slow assistance, etc could be seen during the disasters. Circumstances have changed with the passage of time, the tsunami in Indian Ocean has once again warned the humanity to further deepen their sense of taking precautions against natural calamities, to strengthen their ability and improve relief system in disaster prevention and relief. Today disasters include not only natural disasters but also artificial created ones. Some big countries have made efforts to summarizing their lessons from their experiences. For example, the Japanese government has formulated a series of laws in the aftermath of the Kobe earthquake in 1995 in an attempt to promote optimization of its comprehensive disaster relief process. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. government established the homeland Security Office, and brought the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a major sector responsible for disaster relief, under its leadership with a purpose to enhance its ability for comprehensive disaster prevention and relief. In China great efforts have been made since SARS in 2003, the State Council issued a general plan on emergency response, and also established some agencies like the State Administration of Work Safety and the office of Emergency Management for dealing with unexpected incidents.Undoubtedly the advanced experience from outside must be helpful for improving each country's ability on disaster relief. At present, the relief systems and activities differ from country to country, and from continent to continent, because of the influence of disaster's type, economic level and system of government. However, based on our own practices, we could analyze disaster response, the characters of assistance and good experience by means of summarizing the general relief system and comparing the emergency mechanism and assistance mechanism of each country.