International Disaster Relief: The Implications for New Zealand and the South Pacific.

Abstract

International disaster relief can prove an important instrument of states' foreign policy making. Principally delivered by Western donor nations to poor disaster-prone non-Western countries in the wake of catastrophe, the processing of global charity is generally characterised by organisational confusion, operational chaos and material excesses. This situation tends to reflect the present incomplete analytical state of disaster research and theory where attempts to provide working definitions and coherent theory on which to ground effective relief activity are themselves uncoordinated, due mainly to a dearth of relevant political analysis. Too anarchic to be labelled a system in any strict sense of the word, international disaster relief may, therefore, be termed a form of selective "state humanitarianism." The international political relationships which surround delivery of relief largely belie the justification of humanitarianism used when indiscriminate foreign intervention takes place in disaster-stricken states. Whilst components of state humanitarianism - governments, non-government organisations and private voluntary agencies - may be moved by genuine compassion, they nevertheless remain part of an expanding international relief industry which tends to relentless aggrandisement in practice, both in organisation and operation. The effects and long-term consequences for recipients of these sporadically dealt services have not yet been systematically examined, because this is an area of research that is politically controversial and methodologically formidable. Scholars have generally opted for less fraught fields, hazards and socio-psychological factors, although increasing death tolls and devastation occurring after catastrophe are now prompting more radical researchers to seek the missing political link which lies in the widely-accepted relationship between poverty and disaster. New Zealand has plotted a cautious course in regional relief since the turn of the century, but has inevitably been drawn into the disaster donation maelstrom following major calamity in the South Pacific. In that setting, it is now often difficult to perceive the difference between emergency aid and development assistance in some countries. With a few poor governments dependent on disaster relief to augment budgetted economic programmes, reluctance to implement often expensive preparedness and mitigative measures is understandable, although possibly counter to public safety. There is no tangible international community in which to frame necessary humanitarian laws to protect vulnerable populations against the effects of modern catastrophe and, in an increasingly interdependent world, few prospects for effective enforcement of any legal-moralistic measures, at the present time.