Object: is to formulate provisions that basically would constitute an integral and consistent view of the role and significance of developing the legal framework for international cooperation in the context of responding to natural disasters. Methods: special historical methods, such as specific historical, comparative historical and chronological methods, as well as historical and legal and complex methods, which allowed to go beyond formal research and study the development of the legal field of the international response to natural disasters. Findings: the study showed that before the proclamation of the Decade of Disaster Reduction in 1990, the work in this direction was rather chaotic, unsystematic. Realizing that global processes, such as population growth and the economy of civilizations, as well as natural degradation of the natural environment, climate change, have become the basis for increasing the number of natural disasters and man-made disasters, the international community has attempted to streamline approaches to the problem under study. Conclusions: at present the international law of catastrophes has not been formed, but exists only as a concept, in view of the absence of a coherent system of international legal regulation. Today, the international law of catastrophes begins to form, based on a certain basis, the idea, it crystallizes with the active development of the concept, singling out the principles of international cooperation in the context of responding to natural disasters, developing its conceptual apparatus. It must have, in addition to its functional focus, a human rights one.