ABSTRACT
Natural hazards, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and droughts, can have severe impacts on human displacement. When acute, these events have the potential not only to drive large numbers of people from their homes to avoid harm, but also to prevent them from returning by damaging or destroying houses, cutting off access to basic necessities like food and clean water, impairing livelihoods and creating unsafe conditions. Acute hazards become disasters when they overwhelm the ability of national authorities and affected populations to respond. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) estimates that, in 2010 and 2012 (two recent years that saw a high number of disasters), 42 million and 32.4 million people, respectively, were newly displaced by sudden-onset natural disasters (IDMC and OCHA 2009; Yonetani 2011; IDMC and NRC 2013). Notably, these estimates do not include millions more people displaced by slow-onset disasters such as droughts. As IDMC points out, “[t]he sheer scale of displacement should leave no doubt as to the seriousness and immediacy of the challenge this poses for affected populations, governments, and the international community” (Yonetani 2011, 4).
