Address at the Golden Spear 2003 Symposium

"More critically, disaster management has to address the prevention and mitigation dimensions, in terms of avoidance of the adverse impact of hazards, as well as limiting the impact of devastation. Definitely, taken in this perspective, the issue of disaster management can neither be sectoralized into a responsibility of a single agency or assigned to a particular level of government, nor can it be de-linked from the mainstream development agenda of a country or a region." - Dr. Salim, July 28, 2003