Mirzadi, photographed sleeping on the roadside in Sukkur. 'We live and sleep on the ground here, next to the road. I have three daughters and one son, but there are 45 to 50 family members living here with us. We are not allowed to live in the tent village because our ID cards were washed away, so we’ve nothing to prove who we are.' Photograph: Gideon Mendel / guardian.co.uk

December 19, 2010, UNITED NATIONS (APP): Even as people displaced by the devastating floods in Pakistan continue streaming back to their destroyed homes, the UN and its partners warned on Friday that humanitarian needs remain enormous amid dwindling resources. “Under-funding remains a challenge,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in an update, warning that with the food cluster facing a $237 million shortfall, food aid could run out next month, unless further contributions are received. The shelter cluster has reported that emergency shelter materials have been distributed to 47 percent of the estimated number of people whose homes were damaged or destroyed, but agencies will be unable to provide early recovery shelter to an estimated 800,000 homeless households. In Sindh, people have continued to return to their villages as the flood waters recede and access improves, but some areas remain under water, the UN said. Of the 4,800 camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) identified in October, 325 are still open, accommodating roughly 130,000 people. There are, however, newly established camps or secondary displacement sites that have sprung up in areas of return, according to OCHA. In province, receding water has enabled people to move out of camps in several districts, but more than 4,300 families remain in camps. With temperatures continuing to fall rapidly across the country, thousands of flood-affected households remain in need of “winterised” shelter and medical aid. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), the return of those displaced by conflict in FATA continues, but an estimated 170,000 families are unable to go back to the areas because of insecurity. More than half a million vulnerable farming families affected by floods in KP, Punjab and Balochistan have received seeds and fertilisers, OCHA said. Floods that hit Pakistan following the onset on the monsoon rainfall in late July created one of the largest humanitarian crises the UN and its humanitarian partners have ever responded to. The disaster claimed some 2,000 lives and left over 20 million others homeless and at risk of malnutrition and diseases. Millions lost livelihoods as flood waters swamped villages, towns and crops from north to south, damaging or destroying nearly 1.9 million homes.

Dwindling funding could leave Pak flood survivors without aid: UN