Facts and figures on discrimination
Minorities
In the 2005 South Asia earthquake, 37 Christian families had been living in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan. During the relief and recovery phase, these families were discriminated against. They were not allowed to share shelters with Muslim survivors. They had lived in Muzaffarabad for 25 years, but had not been registered as citizens and voters, or issued with national identity cards.
(Church World Service Pakistan/Afghanistan and Duryog Nivaran Secretariat joint study)
The vast desert and semi-desert region in northern Kenya is home to 3 million people – most of whom are pastoralists. It is the most underdeveloped part of the country, with only ten kilometres of tarmac road in the entire region.
(2007 Christian Aid report)
The pastoralist population has one of the highest levels of poverty and vulnerability to food insecurity in Kenya.
(World Food Programme)
There are only two legally recognized land systems in Kenya – farming and town planning. Despite the fact that 80 per cent of Kenya is arid and semi-arid, pastoralism is not recognized as a land-use system.
(Ali Wario, a Kenyan pastoralist community MP, quoted in the East African newspaper in 2006)
After the Indian Ocean tsunami, members of the Fisher community excluded Dalits. Much of the relief materials – family relief kits, rice packets and donated clothes – failed to reach them.
(Minority Rights Group International)
After the Indian Ocean tsunami, the Tamil Nadu state government provided segregated facilities and camps for Dalit victims on the grounds that it was the only way that it could ensure Dalits were not abused. This was a conscious and practical decision. Some Dalits wanted to be housed separately because they feared attack from dominant communities.
(The Indian Express)
After the Indian Ocean tsunami, some Dalits were employed to manually clean drains and toilets by the local authority. They were also assigned the role of collecting dead bodies on the shore, but were not given protective gloves and masks.
(ActionAid)
Older people
Between 2005 and 2050, the global population aged 60 or above will triple from 673 million to over 2 billion, while the number of children (0–14 years of age) will remain largely static at around 1.8 billion.
(World Population Prospects)
In 2005, HelpAge India noted that there was no specific component for older people in the relief operations of state governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or multilateral agencies. Older people make up over 7 per cent of the population, but they were not singled out as a vulnerable group and were unable to access food, healthcare and cash due to discrimination and a lack of information and support mechanisms.
(HelpAge India)
Funding to support older people represents a fraction of the overall sums directed through humanitarian organizations. Funding accounts for 1 per cent or less of individual country responses – significantly short of the 7 per cent recommended by the Sphere Project.
(HelpAge International)
Nearly 40 per cent of older people were at risk of malnutrition in Darfur in 2006.
(HelpAge International)
The number of people dying from nutritional deficiencies in low-income countries is more than 50 per cent higher among the over-60s than among children under 14.
(World Health Organization (WHO))
Over half of older people living in southern African countries that are severely affected by HIV and AIDS care for orphaned and vulnerable children. In Darfur, 29 per cent of the 4,000 older people surveyed cared for orphans – most of them caring for two or more.
(HelpAge International)
After the Indian Ocean tsunami, more than 9,000 older people had been overlooked for assistance.
(HelpAge India)
There are no UN agencies and very few international NGOs dedicated to older people.
(World Disasters Report 2007)
In 2001, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, developed a policy on older refugees – the only separate policy for this age group within the UN system.
(UNHCR)
Up to 60 per cent of orphans in eight countries in sub-Saharan Africa live in households headed by grandparents.
(UNAIDS)
Persons with disabilities
There are over 600 million persons with disabilities worldwide – between 7 and 10 per cent of the global population – 80 per cent of whom live in developing countries.
(World Health Organization (WHO))
As at 31 January 2007, some 2,000 children were still waiting for prosthetic limbs following the South Asia earthquake in October 2005.
(IRIN)
Women
After the Indian Ocean tsunami, in some areas the ratio between female and male deaths was three to one.
(Oxfam International)
Following Hurricane Mitch, a report states that the majority of the agencies that were interviewed indicated that they do not consider gender explicitly and that they do not disaggregate their data according to sex or analyse their results from a gender perspective.
(Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC))
Hurricane Katrina struck the US Gulf Coast and forced over 3.2 million people from their homes. Of these internally displaced people (IDPs), some 99,000 relocated to temporary trailer camps in Louisiana and Mississippi.
(Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA))
A 2006 survey (in the wake of Hurricane Katrina) found high rates of gender-based violence compared with baseline rates provided by the US Department of Justice. Some 5.9 rapes were documented per day per 100,000 women following displacement. This equates to 527 rapes among the 32,841 women displaced into trailer parks. This rape rate is 53.6 times higher than the highest baseline state rate (0.11 per day per 100,000 women in Mississippi in 2004).
(International Medical Corps (IMC))
A 2006 survey (in the wake Hurricane Katrina), found high rates of violence perpetrated by intimate partners or spouses. Intimate partner rape was 16 times higher than the US yearly rate. In the 274 days following Hurricane Katrina, the rate of women experiencing beatings by a spouse was 3.2 per cent – more than triple the US yearly rate.
(International Medical Corps (IMC))
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child covers discrimination, but only 2 per cent of the world’s children are legally protected from violence in all settings, according to the United Nations. And children’s unique needs in disasters continue to be marginalized in disaster responses.
(United Nations)
