Human Rights and Natural Disasters: Mitigating or Exacerbating the Damage?

The past two years have been marked by several catastrophic natural disasters. These disasters were bracketed by the earthquake in Haiti in January 2010 which killed an estimated 300,000 people and displaced more than 2 million, and the earthquake in Japan in March 2011 which killed an estimated 25,000 and displaced more than 300,000.