1,400+ Killed as South Asia Hit by Worst Floods in Decade

Flooding on the sub-continent makes Houston look like a day at the beach,

but not a mention today on CNN or NYTimes

47 people have been killed in Hurricane Harvey and its aftermath

1400+ have been killed on the sub-continent, 40 million affected

100s of 1000s of children may lose education

Traffic resumes on a muddy road after the water receded in Mumbai on August 30, 2017, following heavy rains that brought major flooding to the coastal city. © Punit Paranjpe / AFP

More than 1,400 people have been killed across India, Nepal and Bangladesh as the region suffers the most devastating flooding in a decade.

Hundreds of towns and villages have been submerged by the devastating floods which have now persisted for over two months, affecting an estimated 40 million people.

Tens of thousands of people have taken refuge in relief camps that are short of food and vulnerable to disease.

The head of a South Asian regional body, launched this year to boost disaster coordination, said the flooding underlined the poor planning, Reuters report.

"The floods this year have exposed the urgency for (South Asian) nations to work together to deal with natural disasters," said PK Taneja, of the India-based SAARC Disaster Management Centre.

Monsoon season causes widespread flooding every year across South Asia.

The heavy rains are being blamed for the collapse of a 117-year-old building in Mumbai on Thursday. At least 34 people were killed when the six story building caved in on itself. The building had reportedly been declared unsafe in 2011 but many people remained living there, according to The Times of India.

The devastating flooding has sparked anger across the affected areas but authorities have tried to distance themselves from culpability by highlighting the scale of this year's deluge.

“If you get a whole year's rain in one to two days, how will you handle it? No preparation and planning will work,” said Anirudh Kumar, of the disaster management department in the Indian state of Bihar.

Over 500 people have died in Bihar with a further 850,000 displaced.

Aid agencies said people are beginning to return to their homes only to find it completely destroyed. Dibya Raj Poudel, of the Nepal Red Cross Society, said: "Many survivors are traumatized... They fear the floods may hit them any time again and they have no place to stay nor any food to eat.”

Around 18,000 schools have also been destroyed or damaged and NGOs are warning that hundreds of thousands of children are at risk of permanently falling out of the education system.

“We haven’t seen flooding on this scale in years and it’s putting the long-term education of an enormous number of children at great risk,” said Rafay Hussain, from Save the Children.

Equality of the Sexes Take a Big Step (Out of the Cowsheds) in Nepal

Nepal criminalizes tradition of forcing menstruating women

into cowsheds

Nepalese women sit by a fire in a chhaupadi hut © Prakash Mathema / AFP

The Nepalese government has made it a criminal act to force women into cowsheds while they’re on their periods. The ancient Hindu tradition sends menstruating females into the sheds to keep so-called “impurity” out of the home.

Although the practice – called ‘chhaupadi’ – was banned by the Supreme Court in 2005, it remains common in Nepal's remote west.

However, the government has now made the practice a criminal act that could come with jail time.

“The parliament has a passed a new law that makes chhaupadi a criminal act,” lawmaker Krishna Bhakta Pokharel, who headed a parliamentary panel that finalized the legislation, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“Anyone forcing women into seclusion during their period can now be sentenced to three months in jail.”

The new law will come into force within a year, according to Pokharel, as authorities want to spread awareness of the legislation before cracking down on offenders.

Some Nepalese communities believe they will fall victim to misfortune such as natural disaster if females are not sent into isolation while menstruating.

However, the practice – which exposes them to rape by men and attacks by wild animals – has led to the deaths of several women.

Just last month, a 19-year-old died from a snake bite while she was staying in a shed in the district of Dailekh. In December, another girl suffocated to death in a poorly-ventilated shed in the Achham district.

In addition to sending females into isolation, some communities also ban them from drinking milk and feed them less food while they are on their periods.

The law against banishing women to cowsheds has been praised by the National Alliance for Women's Human Rights Defenders, a local Nepalese activist group, which has called the practice “inhumane.”

The group's head has called on community members and activists to “remain vigilant and report any case of chhaupadi.”

“Such vigilance will force the government to strictly enforce the law,” Renu Rajbhandari said, as quoted by Reuters.

The ban comes after the United Nations joined up with the youth-led organization Restless Development Nepal in April, in order to push for an end to the practice which the organization said subjects women to “cold and isolation, often at risk of illness and animal attacks.”