A disaster is any natural event that overwhelms a community, district or country’s ability to respond. There are natural catasrophes, events caused by natural forces and man-made disasters events arising in conjunction with human activities:
- Natural: hurricanes, cyclones, earthquakes, tornados, floods, tsunamis, droughts, volcano eruptions etc.
- Man-made: nuclear accident, chemical spill, conflicts, major fires etc.

It is important to note that some disasters are "complex" - that is, involve both natural and man-made phenomena. For example, flooding may be caused by deforestation; wars or the political control of water systems may cause droughts and crop failures.

In 2002, more disasters were reported than any year of the preceding decade. Fortunately, the disasters appeared less deadly than before - 24,500 people were reported killed, compared to the decade's average of 62,000 per year. But they had more impact than ever: 608 million people were affected, which is three times the annual average from 1992-2001. Drought in India alone affected 300 million people during 2002.

These figures do not even include data on those killed or affected by war, conflict-related famine or disease.

Disasters continue to target the world's poorest and least developed. Of those killed in 2002, just 6 per cent lived in countries of high human development. While countries of low human development reported the fewest natural disasters during the decade, their death toll is by far the highest.

Weather-related disasters continued to rise during the past decade. Famine remained by far the deadliest disaster, but floods affected more people across the globe than all other natural or technological disasters put together.

Comparing the decades 1983-1992 and 1993-2002, reported global deaths from natural and technological disasters have fallen by 38 percent. However, numbers of people reported affected have risen by 54 per cent over the same period.

Source: IFRC World Disasters Report 2003

There is an inequality in the way aid efforts are distributed across the globe according to the World Disaster Report 2003 from the International Federation of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent societies. There is a focus on aid efforts in high profile conflicts on the expense of the long term suffering in chronic emergencies. Countries targeted in the "War on Terror" such as Iraq and Afghanistan has received a lot of media attention and also a lot of humanitarian and reconstruction aid, but other countries away from the medial and political attention, such as Angola, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, all though as deserving, has received less aid. Across Africa, droughts, floods, conflicts and infectious diseases puts 40 million people in 22 countries on the African continent on the verge of starvation.

The report states that the aid agencies themselves are partially responsible for this shift in focus. Poor data gathering, information sharing and collaboration between agencies has meant that the true scale of suffering in many crises has been unknown for the international community.

The IFRC now proposes that there is an urgent need to invest in "credible objective assessment of humanitarian need across the globe, so that aid is allocated to those in need, not to those in top of the strategic and media agenda."