A report submitted by the Ministry of Disaster Management of Sri Lanka to the parliament indicates that 128 persons have been killed and further 122 have been disappeared due to natural disasters in 2016. Further 59 persons have been injured in natural disaster situations.
The deaths and disappearances have been caused by floods, landslides and lightening etc. Landslides were the mostly disastrous whereas 67 persons were killed and 117 were disappeared in them. Meanwhile, floods took 26 lives.
Natural disasters in 2016 have affected a total of 654,316 individuals of 189,556 families in Sri Lanka.
The number of houses fully damaged was 861 while 7955 houses were partly damaged.
Around a year ago, the United Nations Population Fund’s (UNFPA) highlighted in State of the World 2015 report, that the likelihood of being displaced by a disaster today is 60 per cent higher than it was four year’s ago. In 2015, more than 100 million people were in need of humanitarian assistance, up from 88 million in 2014 and 78 million in 2013. About a quarter of them were women and adolescent girls of child bearing age – between 15 and 49.
When a crisis strikes, women and girls tend to be disproportionately disadvantaged. Without the usual protection of family and community, women and adolescent girls frequently become victims of sexual violence, unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.
Following photos the Kiyanna team captured at a temporary IDP camp at Wellampitiya in Colombo city outskirts speak for them.
(This article was originally published in www.kiyanna.lk. That site is now changed to www.ivoice.lk owned by SDJF and supported by UNFPA)