This year&${esc.hash}39;s World Disasters Report from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) focuses on how women, the elderly, minorities and people with disabilities are discriminated against in disasters. It says aid agencies and governments should make more effort to avoid discrimination in their relief and recovery programmes.
DISASTERS IN 2006 - THE BIG PICTURE- The number of natural disasters reported worldwide in 2006 was slightly lower than in the previous year: 427 compared to 433 in 2005.
- Compared with 2005, the number of people reported to be affected by disasters dropped by 10 percent to 142 million. There was a dramatic fall of 75 percent in the number of people reported as killed, to 23,833.
- The deadliest disaster of 2006 was May&${esc.hash}39;s earthquake in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in which 5,778 people died.
- While the numbers of disasters, deaths and people affected were lower in 2006 than in 2005, the trends in the past ten years show a large increase over the previous decade.
- Between 1997 and 2006, there were 6,806 reported disasters compared to 4,241 from 1987 to 1996 - a rise of 60 percent
- Over the same period, the number of deaths doubled from 600,000 to 1.2 million, and the average number of people reported affected per year rose by 17 percent from around 230 million to 270 million.
- The Red Cross attributes the rises to better reporting of smaller disasters and an increase in severe disasters.
DISCRIMINATION IN DISASTERS- After the Indian Ocean tsunami, three times more women than men died in some affected areas, according to Oxfam International.
- Violence against women displaced from their homes rose sharply in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which killed at least 1,800 people on the U.S. Gulf coast in August 2005. A 2006 survey found that the rape rate after the disaster was 54 times higher than the baseline rate for the state of Mississippi, according to relief agency International Medical Corps.
- The number of people dying from malnutrition in poorer countries is more than 50 percent higher among the over-60s than in children under 14, the World Health Organisation says.
- After the 2005 South Asia earthquake, Christian families in Pakistan-administered Kashmir were not allowed to share shelters with Muslim survivors, according to a study by aid agency Church World Service Pakistan and the Afghanistan and Duryog Nivaran Secretariat.
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