Vulnerable Populations

The effectiveness of governments, humanitarian workers, and agencies with regard to the needs of vulnerable populations has increasingly become a measure of effective emergency planning and disaster management. Yet the term vulnerability conjures up a range of interpretations. The words vulnerable and vulnerability are notoriously elusive to define and open to interpretation, with different professions attributing their own meanings to these terms. The word vulnerability is derived from Latin, for which the equivalent in English is “to wound.” Vulnerability is a term that is used in disasters to suggest the level of a person's susceptibility to hazard risk. However, it would be too simplistic to assume that there is a finite list of people who belong to the vulnerable population. Perhaps the most important aspect in the discussion about vulnerable populations relates to issues that make people vulnerable. A person's capacity to deal with their susceptibility and exposure to risk could suggest the level of their potential vulnerability. Thus, social, economic, political, cultural, and environmental factors, separately or collectively, contribute to the level of a person's vulnerability. Vulnerability and the susceptibility to hazard risk can increase, remain stable, or decrease over time, depending on a range of other critical factors. These factors may relate to livelihoods, which are essentially about the strengths which people individually or collectively possess. These strengths are generally known as assets, and include the following:

• Natural assets, such as water, minerals, land, and forests
• Human assets, such as health, skills and knowledge
• Financial assets, such as income, savings, access to credit, credit, and remittances
• Physical assets, such as water and sanitation, shelter, and other infrastructure like roads and transport.
• Social assets, such as family affiliation, reciprocal arrangements based on trust, and community networks