The Inter-governmental Meeting to finalise the text of the draft SAARC Agreement on Rapid Response to Natural Disasters concluded in Male last Thursday with a broad agreement on the issue that needed to be addressed.

According to the global database on disasters, over the past forty years, South Asia faced as many as 1,333 disasters that killed 980,000 people, affected 2.4 billion lives and damaged assets worth $105 billion. These totals are, by far, the highest among the recorded disasters in various geographic regions.

No border for disaster