World Disasters Report 2006 – Focus on Neglected Crises

This year’s report also looks at less likely candidates for the title of neglected crisis. In

Nepal, a country racked by civil war for a decade, an estimated 35,000 women and newborn
babies die each year due to unsafe childbirth and neonatal practices. Mountains,
conflict and lack of money conspire to prevent their access to adequate healthcare.
Discrimination against women in the highly traditional villages of rural Nepal adds to
their burden. Yet this silent tragedy, which has claimed over 25 times more lives than the
conflict, goes virtually unnoticed by the media and shows few signs of improving.

We devote a whole chapter to studying the gendered impacts of disasters, with a particular
focus on the women of northern Pakistan who survived the earthquake but struggled
to access their fair share of aid. And we analyse the plight of Africa’s boat migrants,
several thousand of whom are thought to die each year in desperate attempts to reach
Europe by sea. Theirs is such a neglected crisis that no single organization is even collating
data on casualties, let alone appealing for their aid.