Far more displaced by disasters than conflict: study
September 17, 2014 21:11
Disasters last year displaced three times more people than violent conflicts, showing the urgent need to improve resilience for vulnerable people when fighting climate change, according to a study issued today.
The Norwegian Refugee Council, an independent group that focuses on emergency aid, released the findings ahead of a United Nations summit on Tuesday aimed at building momentum for a global agreement on climate change.
The report said that 22 million people were displaced in 2013 due to disasters brought on by natural hazards, nearly three times the number who were forced from their homes due to violence.
The problem has been worsening, with roughly twice as many people displaced around the world due to disasters now than in the 1970s, even as better forecasting and relief operations have reduced the number of deaths.
"It's a wake-up call, I think, to world leaders coming here -- as bad as it is today, it would be dramatically worse unless much more is invested in resilience," said Jan Egeland, the Norwegian Refugee Council's secretary general.
"We have to make people in the Philippines or Chad or in Haiti as resilient as we are in Norway or in many parts of the United States," he told AFP.
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