Private humanitarian responses to disaster vulnerabilities: The Chernobyl children from Belarus in Italy

Abstract

This article aims to understand how children’s vulnerabilities function in humanitarian aid programmes. Different types of vulnerabilities that emerged as a result of and in response to the consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster (1986) during recuperation of the affected children from Belarus in their Italian host families are examined. It is shown that while the initiation of aid was based on directly disaster-related vulnerabilities (radiation-related vulnerabilities), the outcomes of this aid were influenced by indirectly disaster-related vulnerabilities (social vulnerabilities).