More than Misfortune: Recognizing Natural Disasters as a Concern for Transitional Justice

Natural disasters are often characterized by gross human rights violations, yet these injustices are rarely acknowledged and addressed through transitional justice processes. Do systematic abuses in disaster contexts fall within the scope of transitional justice? In exploring this question, this article draws attention to a facet of injustice that has been ignored, arbitrarily discounted or inadvertently effaced. I suggest that misperceptions about natural disasters as inevitable, blameless misfortunes perpetuate neglect, in theory and in practice, of injustices associated with natural disasters, and draw on insights from the disaster studies literature to challenge this exclusion. Engaging concrete examples of recent disasters to ground my theoretical claims, I contend that egregious, systematic abuses associated with natural disasters may represent significant concerns for transitional justice. K E Y W O R D S : natural disasters; scope of transitional justice; misfortune; disaster response, recovery and reconstruction I N T R O D U C T I O N In May 2008, Cyclone Nargis ravaged Myanmar’s Irrawaddy Delta, killing over 138,000 people and displacing some two million, many in areas involved in armed opposition to the government. The death toll and the survivors’ suffering were exacerbated by the regime’s initial refusal to allow international aid for its rebellious citizens, a denial French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner decried as a crime against humanity. Ten days later, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake in China’s Sichuan province took almost 90,000 lives, many of them children crushed in schools that, owing to government corruption, were not built to minimum safety standards. Mourning parents seeking acknowledgement and redress have been subject to state harassment * Assistant Professor, Political Science and International Development Studies, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Email: megan.bradley@mcgill.ca 1 This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture. My sincere thanks to Mohamed Sesay, Catherine Lu and the Journal reviewers and editors for their valuable suggestions. Francesca Humi provided valuable re-