A/HRC/27/57 71. Municipal governments should make reasonable efforts to ensure that affected persons are provided with adequate and decent living conditions in shelters. To that end, guidelines on managing shelters should be drawn up and published, identifying areas where special attention is necessary in assisting vulnerable groups, including persons with disabilities. 72. A regional approach should be considered, given that regional organizations and mechanisms often have significant expertise and resources to offer when dealing with disaster situations. 73. Disaster prevention includes action to prevent serious human rights violations and to avoid the historical accumulation of violations of economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to food. 5. Post-conflict dialogue and transitional justice 74. A methodical approach should be adopted that focuses on the importance of bringing armed conflicts to an end and moving to a peacebuilding programme. Establishing a dialogue with the parties to a conflict is part of the reconciliation and peacemaking processes. Representatives of the most vulnerable groups and affected people should be involved in those dialogues. 75. After a conflict, it is extremely important to develop a transitional justice strategy, including reconciliation and reparation mechanisms. A transitional justice strategy is a set of rules, public policies and institutions that are aimed at bringing conflicts to an end and at the same time, ensuring the rights of victims to truth, justice and reparation. Transitional justice consists of both judicial and non-judicial processes and mechanisms that include prosecution initiatives, facilitating initiatives in respect of the right to truth, delivering reparations, institutional reform and national consultations. In that regard, international assistance has to concentrate on the development of national capacity to initiate and lead the process. Disarmament, demobilization and reintegration initiatives should be coordinated with transitional justice processes and mechanisms in a positively reinforcing manner.39 76. By way of illustration, in its response to the questionnaire, the Government of Colombia mentioned the dialogue established with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), various transitional justice measures and the establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission as examples of best practice. 6. Legislation 77. Laws need to be in place for disaster prevention. Their implementation has to be reflected in appropriate budget allocations. States have the obligation to provide the required resources to improve the living conditions of people affected by disasters and conflicts. 78. In some States, national laws include limitations to constitutional rights in several cases, including public disaster. However, it should be highlighted that, even under states of emergency declared after public disasters, States must respect the core human rights and ensure that all national laws respect their own Constitutions, international human rights instruments and the rules contained in the various international declarations on humanitarian assistance. 39 See S/2004/616. 19

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