Reconceptualizing Regional Humanitarian Responses: Cyclone Idai and the Climate-Disaster-Conflict Nexus

Supervisor/s: Gaia Giuliani

Doctoral Programme: Human Rights in Contemporary Societies

The research proposes a postcolonial reconceptualization of the Climate-Disaster-Conflict Nexus, focusing on how regional organizations respond to intersecting crises of climate change, disasters, and conflict. Using the case of Cyclone Idai in Mozambique (2019), one of the most catastrophic disasters to affect the African continent, which resulted in over a thousand deaths, mass displacement and infrastructural damage, the study investigates how the African Union (AU) and the European Union (EU) conceptualized the nexus in their humanitarian responses, performing a comparative analysis of their responses. It assumes that regional institutions, due to their proximity to local contexts and people, have the potential to make a difference in this context by identifying alternatives emerging from local contexts that can also be reproduced at the regional level. The research critically assesses the extent to which AU and EU responses reproduced securitized and Western-centric narratives, also exploring the potential for alternative and regionally grounded approaches emerging from the Global South. Relying on documentary, archival and empirical research informed by a post-colonial approach, this study examines the impact of the AU and the EU regional responses and proposes a reconceptualization of the nexus at the regional level.