Global Report on Human Settlements 2007 - PoA-ISS

Disaster risk: Conditions, trends and impacts
181
tion of women’s home-based businesses, or when
women and girls are granted only limited access to postdisaster
economic aid).
• Work load changes suggest that disasters increase
women’s responsibilities in the domestic sphere, paid
workplace and community.
• Post-disaster stress symptoms are often (but not universally)
reported more frequently by women.
• Increased rates of sexual and domestic violence against
girls and women are reported in disaster contexts.
One global study has found that in 42 out of 45 disaster
events, women or girls were more adversely affected. The
study focused on post-traumatic stress disorder and found
that psychological effects were not only stronger among
females, but more lasting, as well. 41 Box 7.6 elaborates upon
the disproportionate impact on women of the Indian Ocean
Tsunami in 2004.
Social and legal systems can discriminate against
women during reconstruction. The lack of rights or the
ability to exercise such rights can push women closer to
vulnerability, particularly in the post-disaster period, and
especially if male household heads have been killed. The
disproportionate vulnerability of women (and children) to
hazards, but also to exploitation during the social disruption
that follows disaster, has not been adequately factored into
disaster planning. For example, disaster impact assessments
are not routinely disaggregated by gender. There are some
notable exceptions; but more needs to be done to systematically
record gendered vulnerabilities.
■ Age, disability and disaster
The young, the elderly and those with disabilities are often
among the most vulnerable to natural and human-made
hazards. For example, in the Bangladesh cyclone in 1991,
mortality rates for those under 14 and over 50 years of age
were more than three times that for the 15 to 49 age
group. 42 Since data on age and disability is not routinely
collected post-disaster, evidence is limited to accounts of
individual events.
Children’s lack of physical strength and immature
immune systems make them vulnerable to injury and illness
following disaster. Where children are separated from
parents or carers, their safety is jeopardized during relief and
reconstruction. Property rights and personal security of
children, as well as women survivors, are not easy to protect
during reconstruction. Children and young people may be
placed in positions of increased responsibility for household
maintenance or at greater risk through lack of familial
support. For instance, studies from Cape Town show that
children from low-income households face a much higher
risk of sustaining fire-related injuries. This is linked to being
left alone for long periods. 43
For the elderly, vulnerability is more ambiguous. In
some circumstances, the elderly can acquire resilience
through their knowledge and more developed social
networks of support. Where this is not the case, the elderly
can become a high-risk social group. The heat waves that hit
Chicago in 1995 and Paris in 2003 both disproportionately
Box 7.6 More women than men lost in the Indian Ocean Tsunami
Evidence from Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka illustrates that many more women and children
than men died due to the Indian Ocean Tsunami. In four villages in the Aceh Besar district in
Indonesia, male survivors outnumbered female survivors by a ratio of almost 3:1. In another
four villages in North Aceh district, females accounted for 77 per cent (more than threequarters)
of deaths. In the worst affected village of Kuala Cangkoy, there were four female
deaths for every male death.
In Cuddalore in India, almost three times as many women as men were killed, while the
only people to die in Pachaankuppam village were women. In Sri Lanka, too, partial information
such as camp surveys and press reports suggest a serious imbalance in the number of men and
women who survived.
Some of the causes of these patterns are similar across the region: many women died
because they stayed behind to look for their children and other relatives; men more often than
women can swim; and men more often than women can climb trees. But differences, too, are
important. Women in Aceh, for example, traditionally have a high level of participation in the
labour force; but the wave struck on a Sunday morning when they were at home and the men
were out on errands away from the seafront. Women in India play a major role in fishing and
were waiting on the shore for the fishermen to bring in the catch, which they would then
process and sell in the local market. In Sri Lanka, in Batticoloa district, the tsunami hit at the
hour women on the east coast usually took their baths in the sea.
Source: Oxfam International, 2005a
impacted upon the elderly. However, in both cities, it was
the socially isolated and unsupported elderly who were most
at risk. This underlines the social construction of vulnerability.
The physical fragility of senior years itself was not a cause
of increased mortality. In Chicago, high death rates were
found among the elderly who lived alone and were isolated
from the community around them. This has been described
as a social process during which some individuals remain
living in a transitional urban neighbourhood while the
community changes around them, thus making it more and
more difficult to sustain supportive social networks. 44
Data on the additional vulnerability faced by the
disabled is very limited. Occasional anecdotal accounts are
available, and these suggest, in some cases, that the disabled
might be purposely abandoned during disaster. A news
report in 2004 claimed that disabled people were left behind
during evacuation in the 2000 floods in Zimbabwe and
Mozambique. 45
■ The political consequences of disaster
The social and political repercussions of disaster can extend
well beyond forcing change in disaster management policy
and practice. In extreme cases, disasters can serve as
catalysts for political change. That political systems affect
disaster risk is also clear. A survey of 89 natural disasters
between 1972 and 1976 found that political interference
was a regular consequence. The most common problems
concerned lack of acknowledgement of the disaster by the
government of the affected country, the government’s political
interference with the response process, and corruption
in the distribution of relief. 46 Despite such evidence, there
has been little analysis of the impacts of disasters affecting
urban areas upon political systems.
A common metric for measuring the impact of disasters
upon political systems might be described as political
The young, the
elderly and those
with disabilities are
often amongst the
most vulnerable to
natural and humanmade
hazards