A/HRC/27/57 groups, stateless persons, displaced persons, refugees and persons with disabilities. Hence plans should be put in place to take particular needs into account when responding to emergency situations affecting such groups. IV. Definitions 15. Experience has demonstrated that conflicts and natural disasters have multidimensional effects on human rights. They affect the rights to life, health and security. Crops and infrastructure are destroyed, which has long-term effects on livelihoods, and access to food and water, education, health care and other basic services, and even access to justice, are affected. 16. Natural disasters5 are events brought about by natural hazards that seriously affect the society, economy and/or infrastructure of a region. A natural event could be a flood, earthquake, storm, hurricane or volcanic eruption that causes great damage or loss of life.6 Depending on the vulnerability of the population and on local response capacity, natural disasters will pose challenges and problems of a humanitarian nature. 17. A humanitarian crisis is an event or series of events which represent a critical threat to the health, safety, security and/or well-being of a community or other large group of people, usually over a wide area. Armed conflicts, epidemics, famine, natural disasters and other major emergencies may all involve or lead to a humanitarian crisis that extends beyond the mandate or capacity of any single agency. 18. Humanitarian crises can therefore be grouped under the following headings: (a) (b) accidents); Natural disasters (earthquakes, floods, storms and volcanic eruptions); Man-made disasters (conflicts, plane and train crashes, fires and industrial (c) Complex emergencies, when the effects of a series of events or factors prevent a community from accessing its basic needs, such as water, food, shelter, security or health care. Such emergencies can affect millions of people in a great number of countries. 19. Complex emergencies are typically characterized by: (a) 5 6 6 Extensive violence and loss of life; In the 2005 report of the Secretary-General on the transition from relief to development (A/60/89), the expression “natural disasters” was purposely not used as it conveys the mistaken assumption that disasters occurring as a result of natural hazards are wholly “natural”, therefore inevitable and outside human control. Instead, it is widely recognized that such disasters are the result of the way individuals and societies relate to threats originating from natural hazards. The nature and scale of threats inherent in hazards vary. The risks and potential for disasters associated with natural hazards are largely shaped by prevailing levels of vulnerability and measures taken to prevent, mitigate and prepare for disasters. Thus, disasters are, to a great extent, determined by human action, or lack thereof. The expression “disasters associated with natural hazards” should therefore be used, in line with the Hyogo Framework for Action, adopted at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction, held in January 2005 in Kobe, Japan. Natural hazards comprise phenomena such as earthquakes; volcanic activity; landslides; tsunamis; tropical cyclones and other severe storms; tornados and high winds; river floods and coastal flooding; wildfires and associated haze; drought; sand/dust storms; and infestations. See www.who.int/hac/about/definitions/en/. ReliefWeb Glossary of Humanitarian Terms. Available from http://reliefweb.int/report/world/reliefweb-glossary-humanitarian-terms.