A Right to International (Humanitarian) Assistance in Times of Disaster

Abstract

This chapter analyses a number of recent developments in international human rights law (IHRL) with the aim of assessing whether disaster-affected individuals and States can legally claim international disaster assistance from foreign States as a result of legal duties to cooperate and assist in IHRL. Focusing particularly on the recent work of UN human rights monitoring procedures and the establishment of new individual and inter-State complaints mechanisms to IHRL treaties, this Chapter appraises whether legal 'obligations to cooperate and assist internationally' for human rights can somehow be better delineated/operationalised and give rise to actual claims for assistance by affected States. The chapter concludes that the 'colouring in' or 'operationalisation' of the fairly open-ended 'duties to cooperate and assist' in IHRL is not easy; yet, supervisory bodies appear to increasingly use (very) specific and repeated international soft-law agreements on international (disaster) assistance to understand these obligations. Moreover, UN Special Procedures, Concluding Observations and Universal Periodic Reviews regularly reveal and endorse (very) specific international disaster assistance needs in affected States and instruct other States to respond accordingly. This chapter finally argues that new individual or inter-State complaints procedures offer underexplored potential to challenge poor responses to clear assistance needs.