Natural Disasters

This paper traces the key developments and themes for the topic of human rights and 'natural disasters' over the past three decades. It starts by outline the debates on the existence and content of a ‘(human) right to humanitarian assistance’ in disasters. It then proceeds to discusses the contribution of the ILC Draft Articles on the protection of persons in disasters to the protection of human rights. Finally, it unpacks the existence of state obligations for human rights protection throughout the entire so-called ‘disaster cycle’, i.e. from preparedness, to response, to recovery. The paper also more genrally additionally how new threats and issues are arising in the domain of human rights and natural disasters, e.g. as posed by climate change, or encroachment on damage to wildlife and biodiversity (e.g. pandemic risk)