On 26 August 2026, a high-intensity flood surge tore through the transboundary Bhote Koshi watershed. The immense flash flood, with mud and rocks, swept downstream into Rasuwa, Nuwakot, and Dhading districts, destroying homes, farmland, and livestock shelters, and leaving hundreds of families with nothing but what they could carry to higher ground. For communities already living close to the margins in Nepal's mid-hills, the flood was a sudden and severe blow to lives and livelihoods alike.The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Nepal responded rapidly to support the affected communities. Working in close coordination with the Government of Nepal, FAO immediately set up a response operation built around four pillars: emergency food distribution for displaced households, urgent veterinary care to protect surviving livestock, satellite-based mapping to understand the true scale of the damage, and early planning for longer-term recovery. Relief consignments were mobilized straight away reaching the hardest-hit villages shortly after the disaster struck.Getting Food to Affected FamiliesFAO Nepal dispatched a total of 23,100 kg of emergency food supplies, enough to support more than 700 affected households across the three districts. The operation was sequenced to reach the worst-affected communities first: relief kits reached Rasuwa and Nuwakot on 27 August, followed by Dhading on 28 August, after field teams completed an on-the-ground assessment visit to Galchi Rural Municipality to confirm needs before supplies were released.

Each household kit was designed to cover a family's most urgent nutritional needs in the immediate aftermath of the flood, when cooking facilities, clean water, and local markets are often unavailable or destroyed. Including a household water purification set with 8400 liters of drinking water was a deliberate public health measure, as flood-affected areas face increased risk of waterborne diseases when safe water sources are damaged or contaminated.In the just two days, FAO Nepal's food distribution reached over 700 households across three districts — a swift, coordinated response that gave flood-affected families a measure of stability and dignity when they needed it most. It was the first of several fronts on which FAO worked to support Nepal's recovery.  

Beyond the immediate destruction of homes and roads, the flash floods that swept through Rasuwa, Nuwakot and Dhading districts on 26 August 2026, also damaged critical local health infrastructure, disrupted routine vaccine services and left the affected families more vulnerable to vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks.In response to the heightened risks facing the displaced population, the Government of Nepal, with technical support from WHO and partners, has resumed routine immunization services, expanded preventive vaccination and enhanced disease surveillance. As damages to the drinking water and sanitation structures increased the risk of waterborne diseases, an oral cholera vaccine (OCV) campaign was launched in Rasuwa and Nuwakot on 10 September. As of 15 September 2026, over 50 000 people aged one and above have received OCV. Along with OCV, Tetanus Toxoid-containing vaccines are also being provided to health workers, frontline responders and rescue workers to protect them from tetanus in high-risk environments.To drive these efforts, WHO has provided technical guidance, and supported campaign microplanning and coordination. Three Surveillance and Immunization Medical Officers (SIMOs) have also been deployed in Rasuwa and Nuwakot to support routine immunization monitoring, campaign preparedness and implementation, vaccine safety surveillance, active case findings, and investigation of suspected vaccine-preventable disease (VPD) cases. Disease surveillance has also been strengthened across all three affected districts. Real-time telephonic disease surveillance has been initiated in 12 municipalities across the three districts. WHO has also provided 24 VPD sample collection kits and 100 field-level banners to strengthen identification and reporting of suspected cases and 50 Adverse Event Following Immunization (AEFI) kits for use during the routine immunization and vaccination campaigns. Preparations are also underway for measles-rubella (MR) vaccination campaign targeting children aged six months to 15 years in Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts, with a particular focus on children living in temporary settlements and holding centres.“Disruptions to routine health services increase the risk of vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks, making preventive vaccination a critical part of the emergency response,” said Dr Allison Gocotano, Acting WHO Representative to Nepal.“As communities recover, WHO will continue to work with the Government of Nepal and partners to maintain essential health services, support routine immunization and supplementary immunization activities, strengthen surveillance and outbreak preparedness and response.”  ---- Source: WHO Nepal

Nuwakot, Nepal – Standing above what used to be her village, Shobha Adhikari points toward the wide, grey stretch of stones and silt below. “Look at our village of Bhaise,” she says.“What a wonderful place this used to be. But see what the Bhotekoshi floods have turned it into. It looks like a desert.” - Shobha Somewhere along that riverbank, she says, was her home. Nearby was Chetana Basic School, where she taught children between the ages of 3 and 5 at the Early Childhood Education and Development Centre. The classrooms, the homes around them, and the familiar paths through the village are no longer visible.“No homes, no schools, nothing,” she says. “All our houses, school, just flattened to be part of the riverbank.”On the morning of the flood, Shobha was at home having breakfast and getting ready to leave for school, just two minutes away. It was around 9 a.m. when her sister, who teaches at a school higher up the hill, saw the flood coming and warned her to run.At first, Shobha still thought she had time to close the windows and lock the doors. She did not imagine that, within moments, there would be no house to return to.When she reached the road and looked back, the water had risen higher than her home.“I was so relieved we had gotten out in time,” she says.Shobha and others began climbing up the slope. With them were a young mother, just two months after giving birth, and three children aged 3 and 4. “We just grabbed them and ran up,” she says. From above, they watched the river take their homes one by one.In Bhaise, around 50 households were swept away. Shobha says 15 residents are still missing, family members are accounted for, a fact she calls her biggest consolation, even as she grieves with other families.Across flood-affected areas in Nepal, the impact on education has been severe. According to UNICEF’s latest humanitarian situation report, at least 20 schools have been damaged, affecting around 7,000 children, while 80 more schools near riverbanks are still being assessed for flood-related damage. Eight schools are currently being used as temporary shelters for displaced families, disrupting learning for an additional 1,300 children. For Shobha, these numbers are reflected in the faces of her youngest students. Her classroom was not only a place for lessons. It was where children played, ate, rested, made friends and slowly prepared for the next stage of school.“The mental impact on the children is huge,” she says. “There are young children saying, we’ve lost our homes, we’ve lost our schools. It’s hard to hear that.”She remembers a recent school holiday, before the floods, when a parent sent her a video of one of her students crying and asking to go to school. “School is somewhere children socialize, play,” Shobha says. “Many of them are lonely at home, and enjoy meeting others at school.”Now, with both homes and classrooms gone, she worries about what children are carrying inside. “It’s crucial that we return them to an environment of learning, even in temporary spaces, as soon as possible,” she says. “It would also help lessen the mental burden and anxiety they are feeling.”UNICEF is supporting the Government of Nepal and humanitarian partners to respond to the needs of children and families affected by the floods. Across the response, UNICEF is delivering support in education, child protection, water, sanitation and hygiene, health, nutrition, social protection and risk communication.To help children continue learning, UNICEF has dispatched education supplies to flood-affected areas, including 148 teacher kits, 2,694 student kits and 43 early childhood development kits. UNICEF is also supporting rapid education needs assessments to help identify the needs of affected learners, teachers and schools, and to inform where assistance is most urgently needed. Alongside this, UNICEF and partners have reached children and families with psychosocial support, safe spaces, essential supplies and services. This includes child-friendly spaces where children can take part in structured play and recreational activities, and support to holding centres and communities where displaced families are staying.For Shobha, restarting education is also about rebuilding better. Permanent structures may take time, she says, but temporary learning spaces can help children begin to feel safe again. When schools are rebuilt, she hopes they will be located away from flood and landslide risks, and designed to withstand earthquakes too.“How will schools be re-established? How will our homes be rebuilt?” she asks. “These are the questions we’re confronting right now.”Looking out at the place where Bhaise once stood, Shobha says she had expected to see at least some signs of what had been there. Instead, there is only riverbank.“I didn’t think you wouldn’t be able to tell where schools or homes were,” she says. “I didn’t imagine it would be like this.”    ---Source: UNICEF Nepal

KATHMANDU, Nepal  – An estimated 157,050 women and girls living in Nepal’s Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts have been directly and indirectly affected by flash floods that swept through communities on 26 August 2026.More than 500 people have been killed and nearly 1,000 remain unaccounted. Some 10,000 homes have been washed away, while critical infrastructure has been destroyed. With search and rescue operations still under way, the full scale of the disaster is continuing to emerge.Survivors now face severe shortages of food and water, disrupted health and protection services, and heightened risks of violence and exploitation. These risks are particularly acute for women and girls.“The full scale of these horrific floods is still emerging,” said Patricia Fernandez-Pacheco, UN Women Representative to Nepal. “What we do know is that existing risks for women and girls skyrocket when disasters hit. More women and girls are exploited and abused. More women and girls go hungry and without medicine when resources are scarce. There is even evidence from previous disasters to suggest women are more likely to die than men.”In all disasters, women and girls are impacted disproportionately. In addition to increased risks of violence and exploitation, women take on vastly greater unpaid care responsibilities than men, are forced to travel even further to secure water, and fall quicker and more deeply into poverty.Women also experience barriers to accessing information and assistance. Across Rasuwa, Nuwakot, Dhading, Gorkha and Chitwan districts, approximately one in three women is illiterate, making it harder to access information on relief efforts, complete registration processes and independently claim assistance.One in three households across Bagmati Province is headed by a woman, out of which one third rely on already strained remittances.Within the Government of Nepal’s overall response, and in partnership with UN agencies, women's rights organisations and humanitarian partners, UN Women is working to ensure women and girls can access essential services and protection, and that the response addresses their needs.UN Women is also working to ensure women can access response and recovery assistance independently and participate equally in recovery, including through direct livelihood support, reducing unpaid care responsibilities, and removing barriers related to documentation, property ownership, language and mobility.As part of our response, UN Women is mobilizing resources for its Community Kitchen initiative, a women-led emergency response mechanism providing immediate food assistance while creating opportunities for women’s leadership, livelihoods and longer-term recovery.UN Women is urgently appealing for US$2 million to ensure women and girls affected by the floods can access the assistance and protection they need, including those who are displaced, or at heightened risk of violence, trafficking and exploitation.“We urgently need resources to reach women and girls who are cut off, at risk and struggling to meet their most basic needs. A response that meets the needs of women and girls can help prevent further harm and ensure women and girls are able to recover with safety, dignity and agency,” said Fernandez-Pacheco.Nepal Flash Floods:
UN Women Gender Alert #2UN Women's Gender Alert draws on available emergency information, initial reporting from women’s rights organizations, pre-crisis gender data and evidence from previous disasters in Nepal to identify emerging gender risks and priority actions for the humanitarian response.View/Download -----Source: UN WOMEN Nepal