WUNRN
WOMEN, THE ELDERLY,, & THE DISABLED ARE
DISPROPORTIONATELY HIT BY NATURAL DISASTERS – PLANNING & PREPAREDNESS
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http://www.un.org/disabilities/default.asp?id=1546
Disability,
Natural Disasters & Emergency Situations – Disabled Women
A need to include persons with disabilities
Different populations may face similar risks of exposure to the
negative effects of environmental and man-made disasters, but their actual
vulnerability is dependent on their socio-economic conditions, civic and social
empowerment, and access to mitigation and relief resources. Individuals with
disabilities are disproportionately affected in disaster, emergency, and
conflict situations due to inaccessible evacuation, response (including
shelters, camps, and food distribution), and recovery efforts.
Common experience reveals that persons with disabilities are more
likely to be left behind or abandoned during evacuation in disasters and
conflicts due to a lack of preparation and planning, as well as inaccessible
facilities and services and transportation systems. Most shelters and refugee
camps are not accessible and people with disabilities are many times even
turned away from shelters and refugees camps due to a perception that they need
“complex medical” services. Disruption to physical, social, economic, and
environmental networks and support systems affect persons with disabilities
much more than the general population. There is also a potential for
discrimination on the basis of disability when resources are scarce.
Furthermore, the needs of persons with disabilities continue to be excluded
over the more long-term recovery and reconstruction efforts, thus missing
another opportunity to ensure that cities are accessible and inclusively
resilient to future disasters.
The Haiti earthquake in January 2010 and other recent emergency
situations have drawn particular attention to the plight of persons with
disabilities in emergency situations. In Haiti, approximately 200,000 people
are expected to live with long-term disabilities as a result of injuries. Mainstreaming
disability into emergency responses and preparedness, by making disability
issues and persons with disabilities visible in national and international
actions plans and policies, is essential to ensure equality and human rights
for all.
A legal framework to support the inclusion of persons with
disabilities
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities was adopted in December 2006. The Convention marks a
"paradigm shift" in attitudes and approaches to persons with disabilities.
It takes to a new height the movement from viewing persons with disabilities as
"objects" of charity, medical treatment, and social protection
towards viewing persons with disabilities as "subjects" with rights,”
who are capable of claiming those rights and making decisions for their lives
based on their free and informed consent as well as being active members of
society.
The Convention is intended as a human rights instrument with an
explicit, social development dimension. It adopts a broad categorization of
persons with disabilities and reaffirms that all persons with all types of
disabilities must enjoy all human rights and fundamental freedoms. It clarifies
and qualifies how all categories of rights apply to persons with disabilities
and identifies areas where adaptations have to be made for persons with
disabilities to effectively exercise their rights and areas where their rights
have been violated, and where protection of rights must be reinforced.
Article 11 on Situations of risk and humanitarian emergencies,
pays particular attention to the obligation of States parties to undertake “all
necessary measures to ensure the protection and safety of persons with
disabilities in situations of risk, including situations of armed conflict,
humanitarian emergencies and the occurrence of natural disasters.” Further
more, Article 4.1, states that “States Parties undertake to ensure and promote
the full realization of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all
persons with disabilities without discrimination of any kind on the basis of
disability” and Article 32, recognizes the importance of international
cooperation to address the limited capacities of some States to respond to
situations of risk and humanitarian crises.
The Millennium Development Goals have the potential to make life
better for billions of people in the world’s poorest countries. However,
disability is currently not included in indicators and targets to help evaluate
and monitor the achievement of the MDGs. Furthermore, persons with disabilities
are often excluded from international and national poverty reduction
strategies. Environmental dangers and natural disasters can lead to the onset
of many types of disabilities, and inaccessible environments prevent persons
with disabilities from taking part in economic and social activities. Human and
environmental recovery is vital for the achievement of MDG Goal 7, "Ensure
Environmental Sustainability". The MDGs cannot be achieved without the
inclusion of all persons in society, including persons with disabilities.
Responding to the needs of persons with disabilities
Several studies show us that including the needs and voices of
persons with disabilities at all stages of the disaster management process, and
especially during planning and preparedness, can significantly reduce their
vulnerability and increase the effectiveness of Government response and
recovery efforts. However, despite an increasing worldwide focus on disaster
risk reduction as opposed to mere disaster response, most city and related
Government agencies fail to adequately plan for - or include - persons
with disabilities in their disaster management activities. This causes severe
inequities in access to immediate response, as well as long-term recovery
resources for people who have disabilities prior to the disaster and those who
acquire a disability as a result of the disaster.
Rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts must not only be
inclusive and responsive to the needs of all people, including persons with
disabilities, but should include the participation of persons with
disabilities, to ensure that their needs and rights are respected. Women with
disabilities are a particularly vulnerable group whose needs should be included
at all stages of recovery and reconstruction efforts.
WOMEN, THE ELDERLY, & THE DISABLED ARE
DISPROPORTIONATELY HIT BY NATURAL DISASTERS
By Dom Hunt, Disaster Risk Reduction Adviser, Concern
Worldwide – October 13, 2014
IN 1991, A tropical cyclone killed between 138,000 and 150,000 people in
Bangladesh; 90% of the casualties were women and children.
The 2004 South-East Asian tsunami killed 220,000 people. Up to four times
more women died than men. Why should this be the case? Surely powerful natural
events like cyclones and tsunamis should be indiscriminate; claiming the lives
of men and women in equal numbers?
To understand these puzzling figures, we must understand the causes of
vulnerability, some of which are inequalities in the affected populations.
Among the many reasons why women suffer greater impacts than men in disasters
are that women are disproportionately burdened with looking after children and
livestock, women are less likely to be given early warnings than men, and that
women are less likely to be taught how to swim.
I often use this analogy in training courses as I find it helps to explain
concepts using scenarios that we can all relate to and understand. This works
better than expecting people to understand what it’s like to experience an
earthquake or flash flood – which they may not have seen first-hand – but we
can all relate to the feeling of danger when passing underneath a precariously
balanced rock on a cliff.
The loose rock is only dangerous to people who are underneath it, standing
on it, or in the path of a rock fall that may occur. The exposure to a hazard
obviously increases the risk someone may be in, and simply moving out of the
way of a hazard immediately reduces risk.
This sounds simple, but there’s a lot more to it than that. What if the
dangerous rock is above the only place suitable for building houses? What if
the people living there have no means of moving somewhere else?
What we find is that even if exposure to a hazard is the same across a
population, some people are more susceptible to harm than others. The examples
above of the disproportionate impacts that women suffer in mega-disasters
illustrate this point very clearly.
Coming back to the scenario of the falling rock, a young fit man may hear
or see the rock fall, and quickly run into safety. The mother with young
children would be slower, as she’d be getting her kids out of harm’s way
simultaneously. Elderly people may struggle to see or hear the rock, or to
rapidly get out of the way.
It is obvious that elderly people would be more vulnerable to the falling
rock, and we can easily identify why. The fundamental starting point of DRR is
risk analysis – we couldn’t hope to know what to do about disaster risk until
we understand what the hazards are, who is vulnerable to them, and what the
capacities are for addressing risk.
In Concern, we undertake analyses of vulnerability in order to identify
which types of people are more likely to sustain damages during disasters and
why. Some groups are commonly identified, including the elderly, the disabled,
the sick, pregnant and lactating women and the poorest households.
We focus our efforts on these vulnerable groups, and to do so effectively,
we need to understand their particular constraints and listen to their
priorities. Of course we do this because we see vulnerable people as having the
same human rights as everyone else, and recognise that some people need more
assistance than others. Elderly people may need some extra assistance to get to
a cyclone shelter, or may need food and water being brought to them instead of
expecting them to collect it from a public distribution site along with
everyone else.
But there are practical reasons for doing this also – vulnerable people
have huge amounts to offer to the process of risk reduction. Who better to
teach safe behaviour to children than mothers? Who else has a better
understanding of the history of disaster events in an area than the elderly?
Who can better tell you if an evacuation route is easy to use than a disabled
person?
This year’s International Day for Disaster Reduction theme is ‘resilience
for life’. This focuses on the importance of including people of all ages,
including older people, in reducing risks associated with disasters,
and how they contribute to better understanding of and planning
to address disaster risk in their communities.
When I facilitate any sort of risk analysis process overseas, I always
specifically ask for older people to join the conversation. We need to know
their histories so as to determine if hazards are increasing in frequency or
not. We all need to hear their stories of how they survived previous disasters,
and what the community’s strengths and weaknesses are. We need to tap into the
wealth of experience that the elderly have; they are the foundation upon which
we can build a more resilient future for our children.