While the Government has made progress in providing housing to 382,000 families with support from UN-Habitat and other partners, UN Resident Coordinator, Ms. Valerie Julliand, expressed concern for those who were the most vulnerable before the earthquake and whose needs have not been met.

“What is very striking in situations of emergency and earthquake and recovery is that the vulnerable population and those who are excluded from the society are always the most affected,” she said.

“During the earthquake these people were the most vulnerable. They were the ones whose houses were destroyed immediately. They were the ones who had really no fall back mechanism to be helped.

“When the process of reconstruction started, the process of recovery started, we also realized that the system put in place left them on the side because faced with the immensity of the task at hand the government had to take some measures to provide assistance to the largest number of people and in this endeavour those who were left behind, the most vulnerable ones continued to be left behind.”

Ms. Jarraud continued: “Their needs go much beyond a simple allowance of money. Their exclusions is at a different level and has different faces. The people that are excluded are excluded on the basis of their gender, their caste, of their ethnicity, they might not know how to read, they might not know how to seek support.

“In general what we see is that the most excluded in society are those that need the most attention from us.”

Meanwhile the government operates a feedback mechanism which registered 436,662 grievances from around the country regarding housing reconstruction including those who have not been able to start the reconstruction process for a variety of reasons including availability of suitable land.

Nepal is to inaugurate a new National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority following the adoption of a new National Disaster Risk Reduction Policy in 2018 and a National Action Plan 2018-2030 aligned with the global plan to reduce disaster losses, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.

Date:

25 Apr 2019

Sources:

United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction - Regional Office for Asia and Pacific (UNDRR AP)

Themes:

Cultural Heritage

Hazards:

Earthquake

Countries:

Nepal

Regions:

Asia, Oceania