In April and May 2015, two large-scale earthquakes struck Nepal, killing almost 9,000 people, damaging over half a million houses and displacing hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.
Natural hazards are indiscriminate: earthquakes have no regard for social hierarchy, gender, age, disability, religion, ethnicity, or caste. But the impacts of natural hazards—and the humanitarian response to them—tend to discriminate against the very people who are most in need. When a disaster hits, vulnerable and marginalized groups have fewer and more fragile livelihoods options, less access to social and economic resources, less ability to influence the relief effort, and face more barriers accessing assistance—often without the political voice that would enable them to advocate for those barriers to be addressed. Unless these challenges are purposefully addressed during the relief effort, humanitarian crises can exacerbate and entrench social disadvantage, leaving already marginalized people even further behind.