Governing catastrophes: security, health and humanitarian assistance

Recent catastrophes, and predictions of an increasing potential for more, have stimulated thinking about the best policy responses to these threats. This article explores how security concepts influence catastrophe governance. The article considers how globalization affects thinking about catastrophes and describes ways in which catastrophes have been conceptualized as governance challenges, such as the human rights approach to the provision of health and humanitarian assistance. The article explains how health and humanitarian assistance experienced ‘‘securitization’’ in the post-cold war period, a development that challenges rights-based strategies and creates complex and controversial implications for the prevention, protection and response functions of catastrophe governance. We live in a world haunted by catastrophes past, present and pending. From the past come memories of devastating world wars that scarred humanity deeply. In the present, we watch disease and natural disasters wreak havoc around the world. Portents for the future offer more ferocious pandemics, terrorist use of nuclear, radiological, biological or chemical weapons, and planetary pain and suffering linked to unabated environmental degradation. Catastrophes are, of course, not new to human societies, but what is new is the nature of the globalized context in which they occur. We not only see large-scale disasters and the human suffering they cause unfold through communications technologies, but we also have Volume 89 Number 866 June 2007