HAVANA, Sept 6 (Reuters) - Hurricane Ike charged toward Cuba and the Gulf of Mexico as a ferocious Category 4 storm on Saturday, while Tropical Storm Hanna drenched the U.S. Atlantic coast after barreling ashore in the Carolinas.

Ike's top sustained winds reached 135 miles per hour (215 kph), making it an 'extremely dangerous' Category 4 on the five-step Saffir Simpson scale of hurricane intensity, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

Natural disasters have a huge impact on social and economic welfare. Policies to manage them need to be integrated and well grounded to the specificities of natural hazards as well as local capacities in terms of fiscal, administrative and economic capabilities. A well designed natural disasters management strategy crucially depends on carefully assessing and planning responses before, during and after the disaster occurs. This policy note discusses the complementary role that Social Protection more...

'The Stabilisation Unit, previously named the Post Conflict Reconstruction Unit (PCRU), is jointly owned by the Department for International Development (DFID), Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and Ministry of Defence (MOD) (the three “parent Departments”). It provides specialist, targeted assistance in countries emerging from violent conflict where the UK is helping to achieve a stable environment that will enable longer term development to take place.'

This guidelines were developed by an interagency working group led by the US State Department's Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and DStabilization. This "living" document lays out the requirments for supporting countries in the aftermath of a conflict.

In this paper Robert Cohen from the Brookings Institute argues that "UNHCR
must be given the authority and means to
expand its role with IDPs, and international
police and military capacity must
be strengthened to defend their physical
safety."