Less than a year later, in October 1989, an even stronger earthquake, 7.1 on the Richter scale, hit San Francisco, California, killing 62 and leaving 12,000 homeless. On 10 December 1988, an earthquake registering 6.9 on the Richter scale hit Armenia, killing some 55,000 people and leaving 500,000 homeless. The evidence is clear that poverty is an important factor in understanding the effects of natural disasters. In fact, in that year, deadly hurricanes hit both Haiti and Cuba, but while 800 people died in Haiti, only four fatalities in Cuba were reported. For example, the devastating toll on Haiti of 4 hurricanes in 2008 was obviously the result of the storms themselves, but certainly exacerbated by the long-term deforestation in that country and inadequate public response. There are questions about just how ‘natural’ are natural disasters. Nor is it a natural disaster when municipal authorities are able to respond effectively to flooding in their community. In particular, I argue that incorporating a human rights perspective into natural disaster response is important not only because it affirms the rights and dignity of vulnerable people, but also because it can prevent conflicts in the aftermath of disasters.Ī natural disaster is defined by the UN as: “the consequences of events triggered by natural hazards that overwhelm local response capacity and seriously affect the social and economic development of a region.” In other words, a cyclone that strikes only an uninhabited island is not a natural disaster. In this presentation, I’d like to explore some of the connections between sudden-onset natural disasters, conflicts, and human rights. While compassion remains at the core of humanitarian action, relief agencies are increasingly conscious of the fact that assistance is rarely neutral and that their actions can have long-term consequences, as evidenced by the 2004 tsunamis in Asia, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the earthquake this year in Haiti. Responding to natural disasters has traditionally been seen as a compassionate response to people in need.
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