2006 Symposium Summary

Human Rights and Governmental Obligations in the Wake of Natural Disasters.

Tuesday, February 28, 2006, in Greenberg Lounge, Vanderbilt Hall. Directions.

Schedule and Participants

Recent and ongoing humanitarian catastrophes highlight the need for dialogue on the applicability of human rights principles to governments’ obligations in this context. An enormous amount of aid has been pledged to victims of the Iranian earthquake in Bam, the Indian Ocean Tsunami, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. One hopes that victims of the earthquake in Kashmir and the mudslides in Guatemala will not be neglected. Yet critics charge that much of the suffering that followed these natural disasters was preventable. Misery and death were exacerbated by a lack of preventative planning and construction, by inadequate evacuations, by bureaucratic inefficiency in distributing aid, by discrimination in aid delivery, and by “reconstruction” efforts that displace those left homeless even further. This Symposium seeks to bring these threads together and to clarify the terms of the debate by focusing on the human rights laws and norms that could guide governmental action and define governmental responsibility following natural disasters. To advance the argument on these contentious issues, we have selected a group of speakers ranging from local and national civil rights advocates, to scholars and international experts on internal displacement and refugee issues, to governmental aid administrators.

It is often assumed that responding to natural disasters is the province of the executive and legislative branches. Given that disaster preparedness programs and aid distribution are matters of life and death, should we begin to think about the consequences of natural disasters in terms of States’ obligations to protect human rights? Months after the Indian Ocean tsunami, for instance, key issues remain unresolved, including land ownership, the allocation of reconstruction aid, and ground level re-employment assistance. While the protections afforded “civil and political” human rights are well-known, isn’t it time to ask whether governments should be legally responsible for providing humanitarian aid in ways consonant with economic, social, and cultural rights?

Our symposium’s first panel seeks to identify a legal and theoretical framework to address these issues. How, for instance, have the humanitarian norms associated with internally displaced people been implemented in natural disasters? How would U.S. ratification of the Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights influence the response to events such as Katrina? How can advocates push normative thinking based on these rights in a country that refuses to recognize them? Is there room for the application of these norms in domestic legal cases? What remedies might be available?

Humanitarian principles demand that individuals not be discriminated against. Following tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthquakes, however, there has been ample evidence of discrimination based on race, class, caste, and status, from Dalits (“untouchables”) in India to African-Americans in New Orleans. The second panel will look specifically at non-discrimination in regards to rescue efforts, access to aid, and reconstruction assistance. What are governments’ obligations and liabilities regarding such discrimination? What should they be? Should international financial institutions and non-governmental organizations have the responsibility not to acquiesce in the discriminatory provision of aid?

Finally, how can human rights advocates best respond to the man-made fallout from “natural” disasters? What might the effects be of lawsuits based on these rights and norms? How should “natural disaster jurisprudence” develop? Who are potential defendants and what would be the effect of suing them? Would granting economic, social, and cultural rights put the burden on the courts’ common law development techniques, taking years to become coherent and comprehensive? Or do advocates first need to take other steps, so as to change the legal climate in which there are so few actionable rights for natural disaster victims?