A (Human) Right to Humanitarian Assistance in Disaster Situations? Surveying Public International Law

Abstract

Current positive international law does not explicitly recognize a right to humanitarian assistance in disaster situations. The author tries to scope out the existence of such human right by carrying out a reconnoitering of hard-law instruments, a review of relevant soft-law ones and a snapshot of national practice. She also refers to authoritative doctrine on the issue. Such an examination is circumscribed to ascertaining whether such a right exists or not, for then briefly exploring the question related to its core elements by focusing on the very nature of the right (individual/collective) and trying to delineate right holders' entitlements and duty bearers' obligations using the same analytical framework applied to the right to development. She concludes that while a right to humanitarian assistance is anchored in hard law both at the conventional and customary law levels as it relates to civilians in situations of armed conflicts, the situation is not so crystal clear for those individuals victim of natural disasters in times of peace. The existence of a right to humanitarian assistance would be a sort of umbrella protection for other rights, or better a complementary entitlement to other subsistence human rights rather than a self-standing right per se. This is confirmed by recent human rights standard setting exercises and authoritative views of treaty monitoring bodies, which would precisely point in the direction of affirming such a right for victims of natural disasters and consider it as a set of human rights obligations.