Today, almost every country in the world has its national law on disaster management. It wasn’t so two decades ago.
Japan was the first country to enact a law on disaster management. Enacted in November 1961, it was called the Basic Act on Disaster Management. The USA had its Disaster Relief Act of 1974, which was replaced by the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act of 1988. Russia adopted its Federal Law on Natural and Man-Made Emergencies in 1994, and China adopted its Emergency Response Law much later, in 2007.
European countries were not ahead. Germany enacted the Federal Law on Civil Protection in 2000; the UK enacted the Civil Contingencies Act in 2004; France enacted Law No. 2003-699 in 2003; and Italy consolidated its Civil Protection Code in 2018.
The impetus for making a separate national law on disaster risk management came primarily from the Hyogo Framework for Action, adopted at the UN Conference on Disaster Reduction held in Kobe in January 2005, in the immediate aftermath of the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004. The very first of the five priorities of action of the Hyogo Framework was the development of a legal and institutional framework for disaster risk management.
China hosted the First Asian Conference on Disaster Reduction in Beijing on 27-29 September 2005 to exchange knowledge and information on how Asian countries were planning to implement the Hyogo Framework. The Ministry of Home Affairs, which took over the nodal responsibility of disaster management from the Ministry of Agriculture in 2002, nominated me to accompany Home Minister Shivraj Patil to attend the conference.
Due to some exigencies, the Home Minister had to cancel his programme, and it fell upon me to lead the Indian delegation. I gave a comprehensive presentation on India’s emerging disaster management framework, including the Disaster Management Act, enacted by Parliament on 19 December 2005 and assented to by the President on 26 December 2005, on the first anniversary of the devastating Tsunami.
Indian initiatives attracted significant interest among Asian countries. Heads of delegation, who were Ministers or senior Ministers, were hosted by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, and I had the privilege of announcing the Republic of India’s decision to host the Second Asian Conference in Delhi in 2007.
The delegation from Pakistan was led by its Cabinet Secretary, Ejaz Rahim, who expressed keen interest in our Disaster Management Act and asked me to email him a copy. He was a scholarly person from Baluchistan and was surprisingly critical of the army’s dominance over civilian administration.
Hardly a week after we returned from China, a 7.6 earthquake struck Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and the Balakot area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa of Pakistan, killing nearly one hundred thousand and affecting more than 2.5 million people in the hilly terrain. More than a thousand people were killed in the Baramulla and Kupwara districts of Jammu & Kashmir State.
Nearly a fortnight after the earthquake, when response and relief operations were still ongoing, I received a call from the Cabinet Secretary of Pakistan, who reminded me of his request for a copy of our Disaster Management Act, which I mailed forthwith.
Pakistan promulgated its National Disaster Management Ordinance on 3 October 2006, when President Pervez Musharraf signed it, but it came into force even later, on 17 August 2007. The Ordinance was ratified by the Pakistan National Assembly and the Senate with minor changes, and received the assent of President Asif Ali Zardari on 10 December 2010.
The structure, institutional framework, and even the language of the National Disaster Management Ordinance/Act of Pakistan mirror those of the Disaster Management Act of India. The Pakistan Act is structured into eleven Chapters, similar to the Indian Act. Pakistan also adopted a three-tiered institutional structure almost identical to the Indian model, with some nomenclatural changes according to local conditions – NDMA at the national level, SDMA/PDMA at the State/ Provincial level, DDMA/ DDMU at the district level, Advisory Committee at the national level, National Institute of Disaster Management and National Disaster Response Force. The powers and functions of these bodies are almost the same.
The significant difference is that the Pakistan Act provides for a separate National Disaster Management Commission, with the Prime Minister as its ex officio Chairman, to frame national policies and guidelines and approve national plans for disaster management. In contrast, these functions are performed by NDMA in India, which is chaired by the Prime Minister. The Indian Act provides for Executive Committees at the national and state levels, which is missing in Pakistan.
The Pakistan Act, like its Indian counterpart, provides for the preparation of Disaster Management Plans at the National, Provincial, and District levels, with similar intents and purposes. Similarly, the Pakistan Act copies the provisions of the Indian Act on Minimum Standards of Relief at the national level but refrains from endorsing similar provisions at the provincial level.
The Indian Act provides for the constitution of the Disaster Response Fund and the Disaster Mitigation Fund at the national, state, and District levels, but the Pakistan Act provides for only one fund at each level.
The provisions of Chapter X on Offences and Penalties and Chapter XI on Miscellaneous provisions of the Pakistan Act duplicate similar provisions of the Indian Act.
Overall, almost ninety per cent of the Pakistan Act is the same as the Indian Act, and ten per cent are adaptations, mainly related to National and Provincial Disaster Management Commissions that have no parallel in India. In retrospect, I find myself playing a role in the process. It will be interesting to study how similar laws have performed in two neighbouring South Asian states.
-30-
Copyright©Madras Courier, All Rights Reserved. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from madrascourier.com and redistribute by email, post to the web, mobile phone or social media.Please send in your feed back and comments to [email protected]
