Paper short abstract:

The empirical reality of disaster management in many countries negotiates and entangles in the prerogatives of sovereign states to govern and respond to disasters on the formal or informal humanitarian impulses and international rights-based discourses.

Paper long abstract:

The empirical reality of disaster management in many countries negotiates and entangles two sets of concern: on the one hand, the prerogatives of sovereign states to govern and respond to disasters the way they choose and to the extent they are able and willing; and on the other hand, formal or informal humanitarian impulses and international rights-based discourses that set humanitarian concerns over sovereignty. This paper demonstrates the transnational yet state-based, humanitarian yet rights-violating nature of disaster management. It illuminates the entanglement of these concerns in the legal ordering of disaster in Tanzania and the related politics of humanitarian giving, taking Tanzania’s 2016 Kagera earthquake as an illustrative case. The management of and responses to the humanitarian crisis following the earthquake gave expression to Tanzania’s unique and historically situated legal order governing disasters, the nature and limitations of the formal humanitarian sector, as well as the ‘everyday humanitarian’ impulses of people and organisations.