A/HRC/37/61 increase economic security, and transactional sex for food or money”.55 This also engenders higher risks of disease transmission resulting from last-resort coping strategies in some regions. 56. Natural disasters may also contribute to a rising rate of gender-based violence, including of sexual violence, 56 and may increase diseases. Such risks are exacerbated if condoms are unavailable or scarce.57 Also, mother-to-child transmission, including through breastfeeding, increases under the impact of natural disasters. IV. Human rights law in disaster settings 1. Disaster response law 57. Natural disasters create large-scale human suffering, and responding properly to disaster situations is challenging. Besides human rights law, other branches of laws, such as disaster response law, humanitarian law, environmental law, climate change law, refugee law, trade law, development law and economic law, as well as non-binding texts and General Assembly resolutions developed by governmental and non-governmental humanitarian actors, contain norms that are of relevance for natural and human-made disasters. Nonetheless, no comprehensive, holistic, multilateral disaster response treaty of general application currently exists. 58. Although the legal landscape is fragmented and uncertain, there have recently been positive moves toward implementing a human rights approach in disaster situations, including in regard to food aid and assistance. A human rights-based approach has crucial advantages in disaster settings, such as avoiding discrimination, prioritizing vulnerable communities, and providing measurable and enforceable obligations through accountability mechanisms. Yet, accountability remains challenging at the national and international levels due to the complexity of the humanitarian system. Defining emergencies and disasters 59. There is a tendency to exaggerate the distinction between natural disasters and human-made disasters. Most natural disasters cannot be simply defined as “natural”, which would effectively release direct and indirect perpetrators from the burdens of responsibility: most of the time the two are linked. Interaction between nature and human activity needs to be better understood conceptually and with respect to policy goals, and on this matter a preventive approach is appropriate in respect of both. Considering that most of the time natural disasters take a heavier toll on poor and underprivileged people, it is important to define what “disaster” means legally and who will be responsible for the consequences of the disaster. 60. The Human Rights Council Advisory Committee, in a recent study, has referred to “emergencies” as situations where, in the context of natural disasters or conflicts, “local families and communities cannot cope with or recover from (the disaster) on their own”.58 The International Law Commission defines disasters as “a calamitous event or series of events resulting in widespread loss of life, great human suffering and distress, mass displacement, or large-scale material or environmental damage, thereby seriously disrupting the functioning of society”.59 61. From the perspective of food security, “disaster” means that besides directly affecting a large part of the population and impairing the availability of and access to nutritious, culturally acceptable and safe food, the consequences of such events, as indicated earlier, may include the weakening of governance structures, destabilization of 55 56 57 58 59 Ibid. Fiona Samuels, Paul Harvey and Thobias Bergmann, “HIV and AIDS in emergency situations: synthesis report”, p. vii. Ibid., p. 11. See A/HRC/28/76. See A/71/10, para. 48. 11