Natural Disasters, Principled Humanitarianism, and the Prospects for a New Solidarism in International Solidarity

This is an inquiry into natural disasters with insights from disaster diplomacy and the English School theory, departing from a debate sparked by France’s call to invoke the R2P in 2008 when Myanmar (Burma) refused to accept international aid following Cyclone Nargis. This call was perceived as turning disasters into a tool of Western interventionism and a new doctrine, the Responsibility to PROVIDE emerged which re-affirmed the consensual nature of disaster assistance. But the debate on coercive humanitarian assistance continues and my contribution links consensual versus coercive disaster response to pluralist and solidarist conceptions of international society, and then points to a new disaster solidarism emerging through (i) Resolution 2165 which authorized coercive aid delivery into Syria and constituted a significant step in the rejection of “apolitical humanitarianism”; (ii) draft articles of the International Law Commission that mention a “duty” to accept disaster aid; (iii) a new transboundary approach to disasters in the UN Sendai Framework; and (iv) robust new climate-disaster projections by climate scientists enabled by artificial intelligence and machine learning.