3. Transboundary Environmental Cooperation

Abstract

On 13 December, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) adopted Resolution A/RES/71/141 and took note of the draft articles on the topic ‘Protection of Persons in the Event of Disasters’ contained in Chapter IV (Protection of Persons in the Event of Disasters) of the report of the UN International Law Commission (ILC) (see Report of the International Law Commission, sixty-eighth session (2016), UN Doc. A/71/10 <http://legal.un.org/ilc/reports/2016/> at 12–73). It consists of a draft preamble and eighteen draft articles, together with their commentaries (see the Eighth Report on Protection of Persons in the Event of Disasters, UN Doc. A/CN.4/697 (17 March 2016)). At the fifty-ninth session of the ILC held in 2007, this topic was included in its program of work, and Eduardo Valencia Ospina (Colombia) was appointed as a special rapporteur. These draft articles apply to the protection of persons in the event of disasters (Article 1), and the key term ‘disasters’ is defined as ‘a calamitous event or series of events resulting in widespread loss of life, great human suffering and distress, mass displacement, or large-scale material or environmental damage, thereby seriously disrupting the functioning of society’ (Article 3(a)). Naturally, the definition is solely for the purpose of the draft articles, and this term has various theoretical and practical implications (see Daniel Farber, ‘Disaster Law in the Anthropocene’ in Jacqueline Peel and David Fischer (eds), The Role of International Environmental Law in Disaster Risk Reduction (Brill/Nijhoff, 2016) at 51–4). The draft articles are meant not to be applicable in the situations governed by international humanitarian law (Article 18(2)). Importantly, draft Article 9(1) provides that ‘[e]ach State shall reduce the risk of disasters by taking appropriate measures, including through legislation and regulations, to prevent, mitigate, and prepare for disasters,’ and the report of the secretary-general suggests that this article represents a critical contribution to the development of normative frameworks for disaster risk reduction (see UN Doc. A/71/230 (29 July 2016) at 6, para. 16). To elaborate a future convention on this topic, the UNGA invited governments to submit comments on the draft articles.