24th Annual Report of the Charter
The 24th annual report of the International Charter: Space and Major Disasters is now available, and describes the Charter's activities throughout 2024.
In 2024, the Charter was activated 85 times in 52 different countries. This is the second year in a row where the Charter treated its highest number of activations ever seen in a single year, showing a clear tend upwards in Charter activation requests. The new average number of activations per year is 38 since 2000, and 46 since 2007 (when the Charter began consistently handling more activations). The range of activations per year since 2007 ranges from 32 in 2011 to 85 in 2024
This year, the Charter was triggered six times for man-made disasters, all of which were oil spills in the following countries:
During 2024, the monthly average of activations was 7.08, nearly two full activations higher than the average for 2022 (5.25) and significantly higher than the average since 2007 (3.87 activations per month for the period 2007-2024).
The International Charter continues to support users worldwide, including countries without direct access. At the same time, the number of AUs is increasing thanks to the Universal Access initiative, which changed the relative weight between the activation modes. By the end of 2024, mandated organisations of 43 countries prone to natural disasters have become AUs after a registration and training process under the Charter’s Universal Access initiative.
The most frequent hazard types being floods and ocean storms, with miscellaneous events (oil spills, search and rescue, snow and ice hazards) and landslides being the least common hazards.
In 2024, the three most catastrophic events were:
- Flooding in Chad with 576 deaths (affected 1.9 million),
- Earthquake in Japan that killed 491 people and affected 170,000 million, and
- Typhoon Yagi in Southeast Asia which killed 850 people and affected over 3 million across five countries.
All three of these events were covered by Charter activations, with Typhoon Yagi being a separate activation for Thailand, Vietnam, and Myanmar. The EM-DAT database (managed by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) (http://emdat.be/disaster_list/)) inventoried 550 natural events in 2024 that killed a total of 11,000 people (officially reported deaths).
By the end of 2024, the Charter had been triggered for 941 disasters in 147 countries since 2000.