Natural and Manmade Disasters: The Department’s Response

Abstract

The Department has responded to the acute needs of people in poorer countries arising from natural and manmade disasters since its inception in 1964. This moral and political obligation was inherited from an earlier period. The Colonial Office provided exceptional assistance to British colonies at times of natural disasters arising from drought, floods, earthquakes and hurricanes, in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, when colonial administrations were judged unable to cope with their consequences, both in terms of humanitarian suffering and the need for reconstruction. The Commonwealth Relations Office provided similar, if limited, assistance to the independent Commonwealth, notably to the Indian Sub-continent, and the Foreign Office did likewise in independent non-Commonwealth countries, notably in South America. The first recorded provision of disaster relief provided by Britain was in 1755 when Parliament voted £100,000 to help Portugal to deal with the Lisbon earthquake.⁷⁰ However, outside the developing world natural disasters have largely been dealt with by national (and local) governments which generally have had the resources to cope. Exceptionally, developed countries have been offered and accepted outside assistance, particularly of a specialist nature. In 1982 the Foreign Office made a transfer of £250,000 to the Department’s expenditure baseline on the understanding that it would respond exceptionally to natural disasters other than in developing countries.