Elements for a reinterpretation of the relationship. Risk-disasters-victims

Abstract

The increasing level of losses associated with disasters over the last century has given rise to review of both the conceptual framework and practical ways to tackle urban risk and disaster response. Within this framework an alternative paradigm has been gaining ground in Latin America: focused on the notion of integrated risk management, disasters are understood as the inevitable consequences of the social processes today resulting from our unsustainable manner of occupying our territory.

The substitution of a conception of disasters as random phenomena for a new interpretation that conceives them as the result of complex processes of interaction between man and territory promotes a rethinking of the way in which governments tend to respond to disaster victims. This document reviews the guidelines of this approach and presents the dilemmas of its application with respect to the usual treatment of disaster victims.