The floods and landslides devastating communities in Tibet and Nepal are a natural disaster. The information vacuum inside Tibet is not.

Hundreds of people remain missing. Families are desperately searching for loved ones. Americans are among the foreign nationals reported unaccounted for. Roads, communications, and power have been cut, while rescue teams race to reach communities across some of the most difficult terrain in the world.

But on the Tibetan side of this disaster, there is another obstacle: the Chinese Communist Party’s longstanding restrictions on access and information.

For years, Beijing has tightly controlled access to Tibet for foreign journalists, diplomats, researchers, and independent organizations. In ordinary times, these restrictions keep the world from seeing Tibet. In a disaster, they can keep the world from understanding what Tibetans need, and potentially from helping them.

That is why Beijing should open affected Tibetan areas to the outside world.

Humanitarian organizations need to be able to safely reach communities and independently assess needs. Journalists need to be able to establish what is happening beyond official accounts. Foreign governments need timely information about their citizens and, where necessary, consular access. Families need to know what has happened to missing loved ones. And Tibetans themselves need to be able to tell the world what has happened to their communities and what they need.

Access is not an abstract human rights principle in an emergency. It is a lifeline.

President Xi Jinping has ordered an “all-out” search for the missing, and China has mobilized hundreds of rescuers in Tibet. But mobilizing the power of the state is not the same as permitting independent scrutiny. If Beijing is confident in its response, it should let the world see for itself.

The stakes also extend beyond Tibet.

The Himalayas may be divided by national borders, but their rivers, glaciers, and climate risks are not. This cross-border disaster has made that reality painfully clear. Not only did the flood devastate communities on both sides of the Nepal-Tibet border, but authorities in Bihar, India moved people from vulnerable areas amid concern that floodwaters could eventually threaten communities farther downstream.

Timely sharing of hydrological, meteorological, glacial, and disaster-risk information is a matter of public safety. China should urgently engage with Nepal, India, and other governments across the Himalayan region to build durable, reliable, and accessible real-time information sharing and cross-border early-warning systems. No community should be left without potentially lifesaving information because a threat originates on the other side of an international border.

The disaster should also change how Washington thinks about access to Tibet. The U.S. Congress has long recognized that restrictions on Tibet have consequences for Americans. The Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act specifically cited the difficulties U.S. consular officials faced assisting Americans trapped in Tibet after the 2015 Nepal earthquake. Today, Americans are again among those reported missing in a disaster affecting the Nepal-Tibet border region.

The administration should press Beijing for timely information about missing Americans and seek whatever consular access may be necessary. It should ask whether independent humanitarian organizations can assess needs inside Tibet and whether affected communities are receiving adequate assistance.

Washington should also examine whether resources Congress has already made available for Tibetan communities can be rapidly mobilized to support the response.

And as the immediate rescue effort gives way to recovery, another question will become increasingly important: Will Tibetans have a meaningful voice in what happens next? Reconstruction should not become an excuse for forced relocation or development decisions imposed without meaningful consultation. Affected Tibetans should participate in decisions about rebuilding their communities, restoring livelihoods, and managing future disaster risks.

The forces of nature that brought devastation to the Himalayas were beyond Beijing’s control. The information vacuum and lack of access in Tibet is not. 

Beijing should let the world in.