The 21st century started off with a series of calamities. And the first decade has even been named by an international magazine the "worst decade ever".

Starting with 9/11 at the start and a financial wipeout at the end, the first 10 years of this century will very likely go down in history as the most depressing and disillusioning decade we have lived through in the post-World War II era.

Some called it the Decade from Hell, or the Reckoning, or the Decade of Broken Dreams, or the Lost Decade in which, over the 10 years, we witnessed some of the most devastating natural disasters.

Successive earthquakes rocked Taiwan, Sumatra, Japan, and various places on the Chinese mainland, including the massive one in Sichuan. Tsunamis devastated Thailand while Katrina flooded New Orleans. Unusual amounts of snow paralyzed the northern countries when long spells of drought wrung dry the southern lands.

The decade was also marred with man-made conflicts. Wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan remain unfinished.

Accidents of colossal scale were another characteristic of the decade spanning aircraft mishaps to train derailments, not to mention catastrophes with mining operations in countries throughout the developed and developing worlds.

These massive tragedies caused huge numbers of casualties and extensive damage to properties. But the greatest impact of these calamities, besides precious lives lost, falls on the survivors, whose rehabilitation and readjustment to life, if at all possible, may take years, decades, or even an entire lifetime to accomplish.

In the acute phase when such disasters occurred and were brought to our attention through the media, we and the entire international community were naturally very much concerned with devising stronger and more effective rescue apparatus to tackle emergencies. We cheered every survivor pulled out from under crumbled buildings or other wreckage. But for the survivors, the challenge began days and weeks after the initial shock passed and when the limelight of media faded.

Indeed, when faced with a natural disaster, especially one on such a scale of calamity, not only governmental coordination is called upon, the roles of the civil society and its organizations also are critical. They are able to offer complementary and supplementary assistance, if not primary assistance to government efforts to stabilize society. They offer comfort and relief to victims and their families. They coordinate humanitarian incentives, lift public spirits and inaugurate altruistic actions by other volunteers. It is a reflection of the maturation of a society on the whole and a demonstration of the inner strength, tenacity and preparedness that a community anchors and represents.

These events pooled people in pursuit of a unified objective on every occasion and we all breathed as one. The singularity of purpose was amply demonstrated when we rallied all our weight behind the call to make our people safe, whole, and worthy of the respect and dignity of a modern civilization and a modern country.

The author is former secretary for home affairs of the SAR government

(HK Edition 04/21/2010 page1)