what makes people vulnerable?
There is a close connection between poverty and vulnerability but they are not identical concepts. Vulnerable people live in circumstances where they are liable to, or live in fear of, a sudden, traumatic loss of their means of livelihoods and of their social or physical environment that they are powerless to prevent. This loss may be caused by a range of hazards including natural disasters or civil conflicts which affect many, or shocks such as sickness or injury which may affect individual households. In each case vulnerable people lack the resilience to cope with and recover from such shocks. The resulting loss is enough to push them into a crisis situation where they are unable to continue with their old means of livelihoods. Poor people have a low level of assets (physical, financial, natural, human and social) on which to base their livelihood strategies. They are usually the most vulnerable because they have little to fall back on if any shock suddenly reduces one or more of the
