ABSTRACT
This chapter examines in more detail how natural disasters relate to the human security agenda. Natural disasters expose people, regularly in great numbers, to extreme risk, and create massive human security challenges. Applying a human security approach should instead actively differentiate between individuals and groups, appreciating the complex and inter-connected nature of threats and vulnerabilities. A human security approach recognises, however, that even in the most desperate of situations people retain their agency, and it is vital to foster possibilities for empowerment. Invoking human security may imply some kind of universalism. Human security may be universal in the rather banal sense that all people are vulnerable to harm, but the degree of insecurity differs massively in, and between, societies. Human insecurity is at its greatest at the edges of society. One important example of this in the context of disasters can be seen by looking at the category of sexuality.
