A/HRC/37/61 often without access to medical care, quality education, proper nutrition and protection”.39 Children who lack adequate nutriments and vitamins may have long-term impacts on their development and adult life, including impairment of their immune systems that leads to disease, long-term illness or death. In addition, malnourishment exacerbates children’s vulnerability to natural disasters.40 40. For example, a study has shown that in Peru, after the heavy rainfalls induced by the 1997–1999 El Niño episode, children experienced inadequate growth. 41 The same study also showed that in those areas, at the time of the disasters, households experienced many challenges, including food shortages, lack of adequate health care, lack of clean water, increases in malaria and diarrhoeal diseases, and loss of crops and livestock which led to reduced income.42 41. In the Philippines over the last two decades, 15 times more infants have died in the 24 months following typhoon events than as a result of the typhoons themselves — most of whom were infant girls.43 42. In November 2017, Viet Nam was hit by a major typhoon that caused direct impacts on the nutritional status of 150,000 children. 43. Studies from Bangladesh show increased wasting and stunting rates among preschool children after floods, due to reduced access to food, increased difficulties in providing proper care and greater exposure to contaminants. 44 44. According to WFP in Zambia, children born in drought conditions are up to 12 per cent more likely to have below-average height and weight than children born in non-crisis years. 45. In Madagascar, in the summer of 2016, UNICEF reported that “the nutritional status of children (was) still challenged by drought and post-drought conditions”. Given limited rainfall, the population faced special challenges — such as puddles where the population collected scarce, yet contaminated, water.45 46. Moreover, as a consequence of natural disasters, poor children are likely to be taken out of or prevented from going to school, and pushed into the workforce. After Hurricane Mitch in 1998, in Nicaragua, it was demonstrated that labour force participation increased by 58 per cent (an increase of 8.5 percentage points) among children in areas affected by the hurricane.46 2. Women 47. Women and girls worldwide already face many inequalities that are embedded in social practices and laws, constraining their access to resources and affecting their food security and nutrition. 48. As the Special Rapporteur mentioned in her 2016 report (A/HRC /31/51), the vulnerability of women is higher than that of men in post-disaster contexts. In times of natural disaster, women’s household responsibilities increase while access to resources decreases. The daily work involved in providing food, water and fuel for households after a disaster requires intensive labour, the bulk of which is borne by women. In many rural areas, women and girls spend the majority of their time engaged in subsistence farming and the 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 See www.unicef.org/media/media_93863.html. UNICEF, Children’s Vulnerability to Climate Change and Disaster Impacts in East Asia and the Pacific (Bangkok, 2011); see also A/71/282, p. 4. See Carolyn Kousky, p. 79; and Heather E. Danysh and others, “El Niño adversely affected childhood stature and lean mass in northern Peru”, Climate Change Response 1 (2014), pp. 1–10. Heather E. Danysh and others, “El Niño adversely affected childhood stature and lean mass in northern Peru”. See www.wfp.org/disaster-risk-reduction/how-disasters-affect-hunger. Ibid. UNICEF, “Madagascar: El Niño drought, humanitarian situation report No. 2” (July 2016). See Carolyn Kousky, p. 86. 9