A group of nine international aid groups including ActionAid, Islamic Relief and Oxfam said efforts to help more than 1 million victims of fighting in Pakistan’s Swat valley were in jeopardy. The agencies face a cash shortfall of more than £26 million (US$43 million).
“This is the worst funding crisis we’ve faced in over a decade for a major humanitarian emergency. Some 2.5 million people have fled their homes,” said Jane Cocking, Oxfam’s humanitarian director. “One month into this emergency, Oxfam is £4 million short and will have to turn our backs on some of the world’s most vulnerable people.”
Oxfam said it would have to close its programs to the 360,000 people it had planned to help if money did not arrive by next month. Concern Worldwide, another group, said it would also have to close its program at the same time, just as health risks such as malaria and diarrhea will rise because of the monsoon rains.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The agencies blame Western governments for not coming up with enough money. A UN appeal for US$543 million has produced only US$138 million so far. Out of the 52 organizations requesting UN appeal funds, 30 have received no funds at all. Worse, most of the funds the UN appeal has received came before the exodus from the Swat valley that swelled the number of displaced people from 500,000 to 2.5 million early last month, the largest displacement in Pakistan’s history.
Since then, rich countries have contributed only US$50 million to the UN appeal.
“The only reason we haven’t faced a massive humanitarian meltdown is the generosity of families and communities of modest means who’ve looked after the vast majority of those who’ve fled the fighting. With so many mouths to feed, these communities will soon be running on empty. The world’s richest nations need to dig much deeper into their pockets to help,” said Carolyn Miller, chief executive of the health charity Merlin.
Delays in getting aid through pose another grave problem: previously governments would have given part of their aid money directly to frontline agencies; in the last four years, however, governments have been encouraged to funnel aid through the UN.
But relief organizations say bureaucracy and a lack of UN staff on the ground have hampered the delivery of aid.
“While we support the principle of more co-ordinated aid, we don’t want to cut one lifeline until the new one can hold the weight,” said David Taylor of Oxfam.
In an acknowledgement of the shortcomings of the UN system, Britain’s Department for International Development says it will now give cash directly to those relief organizations working within the UN appeal.
“Welcome as this change is, it will require other donors to be equally flexible to cover the agencies’ £26 million shortfall,” the relief groups said.
British International Development secretary, Douglas Alexander, said: “The aid agencies on the ground are doing heroic work under extremely difficult conditions and we are determined to support their efforts. The international community has an obligation to help the Pakistani government meet the urgent humanitarian needs of those most directly affected by the ongoing insecurity.”
The UN has described the flight of people caused by the government offensive in Swat as the most dramatic displacement crisis since the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Until now, unlike many emergencies, most people displaced in Pakistan have found shelter not in camps but with host families or in communal buildings such as schools.
Growing numbers of displaced people “feel that they cannot stay for ever as guests of people who themselves are often quite poor,” said Shankar Chauhan, an official from the UN high commissioner for refugees.
The result, he said, is that “more and more ... are starting to move to camps.”
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RSS