A/HRC/19/63 planning, responses and coordination and to put forward recommendations for all relevant stakeholders to address and redress these gaps on an urgent and continuing basis. Children’s vulnerability to natural disasters 2. 24. Children are particularly vulnerable to natural disasters due to their physical and psycho-social characteristics. Their vulnerability is heightened when children are separated from their families, unaccompanied, orphaned, displaced or “disappeared” and do not receive appropriate care, protection, support and rehabilitation 25. During the preparation of this report, it became evident that while children are recognized as being among the most vulnerable to the immediate and long-term effects of a natural disaster,14 it is currently impossible to accurately determine the full extent of their vulnerability. This is primarily due to a stark absence of empirical evidence on the actual impact of natural disasters on children and raw figures detailing the number of children who are killed, traumatized, unaccompanied, separated from their families, orphaned, displaced or disappeared. Only a handful of States have methodically gathered quantitative data on the number of children who have been unaccompanied, separated, orphaned, displaced or disappeared due to a natural disaster, and only seven of those States submitted data in response to the questionnaire. 26. While some basic statistics are available on the number of people who are refugees or internally displaced, the majority of these can be attributed to armed conflicts. 15 The number of children who are internally displaced due to natural disasters is unknown. Children’s vulnerability to sale, trafficking and all forms of exploitation in a natural disaster 3. 27. Children’s vulnerability to sale and other forms of exploitation is increased in a natural disaster. Some people exploit the chaotic environment that follows a natural disaster to engage in criminal activities, such as selling children for the purposes of illegal adoption, forced labour or sexual exploitation. The situation enables them to circumvent national and international standards and remove children from their communities or the national territory. Furthermore, the collapse or absence of a State system during and after an emergency often results in a protection vacuum for children who may become separated from their families 28. Natural disasters destroy or disrupt the normal conditions of life and the care of children and can, in turn, disrupt, deny and delay the realization of their rights. In such situations, children are more likely to be unidentified, hastily fostered, adopted or placed in long-term care institutions, without the possibility of tracing their families, reunification or safe return. Their vulnerability increases their risk to sale, sexual and other forms of exploitation as they may be inappropriately and/or illegally removed from their communities – sometimes by well-meaning individuals who wish to ensure their safety, or by those seeking to profit from the chaos.16 29. The consequences of a natural disaster can destabilize the cultural and legal norms in place to protect children. As a result, children in a natural disaster face increased risk of all 14 15 16 International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), World Disasters Report 2009: Focus on early warning, early action, Geneva, 2009. UNHCR estimated that there were close to 10 million refugees living worldwide in 2010; see UNHCR, Statistical Online Population Database. See Committee on the Rights of the Child, Day of general discussion on the right of the child to education in emergency situations, 19 September 2008, para. 2. 7