International Disaster Response Law: A research area attracting Increasing interest among scholars and practitioners in Europe

Abstract

Over the last three decades, natural and technological disasters have been increasing in terms of frequency, size, the number of people affected and material damage caused. Between 1980 and 2011, 9 916 natural disasters occurred, killing some 2.5 million people across the world (according to the data collected and elaborated by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the University of Louvain). Current international law does not offer a comprehensive legal framework to regulate intervention in disaster situations. What we refer to as international disaster response law (IDRL) is, in fact, a collection of multilateral and bilateral treaties and a wealth of soft law instruments produced by various authoritative bodies, covering a wide range of issues.