In Central America, women and girls bear the brunt of storm disaster fallout
By Sandra Cuffe
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Hurricanes Eta and Iota pounded Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua in November, destroying homes and businesses, laying waste to agricultural land, and decimating longer-term food supplies.
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Northern Central America is a disaster-prone region, but countries are not getting the attention they need from the international community, said Véronique Durroux-Malpartida, a spokesperson for the Latin America and Caribbean office of OCHA, the UN’s emergency aid coordination body.
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“It is a region plagued by many inequalities, and those vulnerabilities can easily turn a ‘development’ situation into a humanitarian crisis, threatening lives, and causing displacement. Particularly vulnerable populations include Indigenous peoples and women,” she told The New Humanitarian.
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More than half of the Hondurans still living in shelters are women and girls, who are also by the coronavirus pandemic. The hurricanes exacerbated conditions that contribute to gender-based violence and limited access to reproductive and sexual healthcare, according to a recent UN Women and CARE analysing gendered impacts of the pandemic and the storms in Honduras.
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