International Disaster Management Ethics

Today's international disaster management community faces demanding political and ethical challenges. In International Disaster Management Ethics, Liza Ireni Saban suggests that it is crucial for international aid organizations engaged in disaster management to attempt to lift the moral fog that envelops their practice and to alert them to the ethical implications and meaning of their decisions and actions, commitment to exercising ethical judgment, and leadership. Drawing on examples from large scale natural disasters—the 2003 Bam earthquake in Iran, the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, the 2005 hurricanes that struck the US Gulf Coast, the 2010 Haitian earthquake, and the 2013 Philippines typhoon—Saban applies current prominent perspectives on global justice to international disaster management, arguing that a process of codification will enhance the capacity to professionalize distributive decision making. Rather than being obligatory, taking into account global distributive considerations will become a defining part of the profession at a global level, at a time when international disaster relief is facing more and more severe natural disasters.