Responses to young children in post-emergency situations
This issue of Early Childhood Matters is published just six months after a massive earthquake off the coast of Sumatra triggered the worst natural catastrophe in living memory. As many as a third of the more than 200,000 people who died in the tsunami were children. Of the 500,000 people who are estimated to be left homeless, again, a third are children, many of whom separated from their parents. The international community responded very quickly to the disaster, and the immediate relief effort was unprecedented in its scope.
Every emergency situation, whether it is man-made or natural, has potentially devastating effects on the lives of people, especially those who are most vulnerable, such as women and children.
