(MENAFN- QNA) Destruction wrought by natural disasters has displaced one person every second from his or her home over the past seven years, with humans, not Mother Nature, often to blame, a report published Monday by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) says.
More than 19 million people from 100 countries were forced from their homes by natural disasters in 2014, and disaster-related displacement is on the rise, according to the report by the Oslo-based refugee and internally displaced persons nonprofit. Weather-related events like floods and storms alone displaced 17.5 million people in 2014, while 1.7 million fled due to geophysical occurrences such as earthquakes.
Since 2008, disasters have displaced 26.4 million people a year, or one person every second, the NRC calculated. In addition to climate change, economic development, urbanization and population growth in areas at risk of hazards are "a toxic mix" of factors that contribute to increased displacement, Alfredo Zamudio, the NRC’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Center director, said in a statement.
Asia saw the largest number of forcibly displaced people, at 16.7 million, or 88 percent of the 2014 total, followed by the Americas and Africa.
China, India and the Philippines, which were hit with two Category 3 typhoons last year, had the highest number of displaced people in absolute terms. In the U.S., more than 56,000 people still need housing assistance after Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012, and 230,000 people in Japan still need new homes after the 2011 tsunami and earthquake, which killed almost 16,000 people.
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