Disaster Globalization: Evaluating the Impact of Tsunami Aid

Center Policy Briefing Papers are written as real-time reflections on current issues. They seek to provide timely analysis and suggest policy options to the academic and aid community.

In every previous major disaster, pledging conferences have come up with impressive figures, much headlined, but when researchers have gone back, months or even years later, there are huge disparities between what states pledged and actually delivered. At present pledges
are not tracked, only commitments. Surely this is wrong. Promises should not be empty.