South-East Asian Floods Take Heavy Toll on Children

Source: SOSChildrensVillages.ca

23/10/2011 - United Nations agencies report that 200 children have already lost their lives in the affected regions; hundreds of thousands more are missing school.

The massive flooding in South-East Asia has already taken the lives of over 200 children, many due to drowning. Damage to infrastructure has also meant that hundreds of thousands of children are not able to attend school.

The UN has reported that the floods have affected eight million people across Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines, Thailand and Viet Nam. 745 people are reported dead as a result of the flooding.

Massive damage to school infrastructure and supplies has resulted in hundreds of thousands of children missing weeks or months of school. In Cambodia, one of the worst hit countries, it is reported that over 1,300 schools are affected, and over 75 of those affected schools are not able to open for the new school year. The situation is even worse in Thailand, with over 3,000 educational institutions there affected by the floods.

According to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), besides access to education the most urgent needs for children are clean water, hygiene supplies to prevent the spread of disease, food supplies and safe places in evacuation centres for them to play.

The agency is working with the affected governments and partners to provide immediate assistance to those who need it most. Livelihoods are being put at risk because of the emergency, resulting in households having to borrow rice at very high interest rates to survive, having to sell their assets, pull children out of school and reduce their household food intake.

In response, the World Food Programme (WFP) said it is launching an emergency operation to address the immediate food needs of some 12,000 households in Cambodia alone with distributions of monthly rations of rice.

The UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) is also urging governments across the affected region to make adjustments in land use for private industry and factories, as locating factories in disaster-proof areas would better protect workers and prevent families from building their homes in unsafe areas.

The UNISDR noted that the well-being of millions would be drastically affected by the loss of livelihoods, as manufacturing plants were forced to shut and agriculture will struggle to recover.