The quake killed some 9,000 people, injured more than 22,000 others and damaged or destroyed more than 900,000 houses.
Landless quake victims missing out as Nepal rebuilds, Oxfam says
A year after the deadly earthquake in Nepal,
thousands of people, especially women, are being deprived of funds to
rebuild because they do not own land or cannot prove they owned the land
where they lived, Oxfam said on Friday.
Nepal's
government requires proof of ownership, but many victims have lost
documents and others did not formally own the land where they lived,
said a report by the international anti-poverty organisation.
The
government this month began distributing grants of 200,000 Nepali
rupees ($1,900) to families that can prove they owned land before the
earthquake, which struck on April 25, 2015.
The quake killed some 9,000 people, injured more than 22,000 others and damaged or destroyed more than 900,000 houses.
"Families
who are landless and who were living on unregistered land are very much
uncertain about the future and support that the government had promised," said Prabin Man Singh, research and policy coordinator for Oxfam, who co-authored the report.
"Those families are the poorest and the most vulnerable among the victims."
Some
3 million people are living in temporary shelters with tarpaulin roofs
ahead of Nepal's monsoon season, according to Save the Children, CARE
International and other agencies.
Land tenure is largely undocumented in Nepal, and data is limited and contradictory, the Oxfam report said.
It
cited one pre-quake government report that said as many as 480,000
families, or 9 percent of the population, did not have access to land,
and another report that said a third of Nepal's farmers did not own the
land they cultivated.
The United Nations has said a quarter of Nepalese households - about 1.3 million - did not have any land or enough land to support families.
But
Oxfam said that in post-earthquake surveys, more than 90 percent of
people claimed to own their own land before the disaster.
As
reconstruction plans are instituted, Oxfam said women are often
excluded because they "are less likely to inherit land, have land
registered in their name or obtain documentation to prove their
entitlement."
Under Nepal's constitution adopted
last September, women have equal rights to own land. But inheritance
laws have kept the ownership numbers low.
Donors
pledged $4.1 billion for reconstruction after the earthquake, but aid
groups have criticised the slow pace of government reconstruction
efforts.
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