UN: Pakistan at risk over world inaction on floods

October 4 (Pakistan News Service) – ISLAMABAD: The United Nations warned on Monday that the international community had failed to respond to the latest flooding crisis in Pakistan, leaving three million people in urgent need of food handouts. The nuclear-armed Muslim state has suffered two consecutive years of floods but has been at increasing risk of international isolation since US troops found and killed Osama bin Laden near the capital in May. “Somehow the present flooding and the humanitarian impact of the present flooding has not yet picked the interest, the focus of the world,” said Ramiro Lopes da Silva, deputy executive director of the World Food Programme (WFP). “If we have no resources, we have no response,” he told a news conference in Islamabad after visiting the flood-hit province of Sindh. On September 18, the United Nations led an appeal for $357 million in emergency funding to shore up rescue and relief efforts for millions of people suffering after floods swept away homes and farm land in southern Pakistan. “The funding is not coming as swiftly and as fast at the levels it came to the response of the floods of last year,” said Lopes da Silva.

Pakistanis at risk over world inaction on floods, warns UN

GENEVA, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) — UN disaster reduction chief Margareta Wahlstrom will arrive in Pakistan on Wednesday, for a three-day visit to the flood-devastated country.
 
The UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction announced here on Tuesday that Margareta Wahlstrom, the special representative of the UN Secretary General for Disaster Risk Reduction, is scheduled to meet government officials, the national disaster management authority and aid donors.
 
Floods caused by excess monsoon rains in Pakistan have so far taken the lives of 415 people, displaced 1.8 million people and destroyed or damaged over a million homes. According to the Government of Pakistan, 2.16 million acres of crops have also been wiped out.
 
UN agencies estimate 2.5 million people are in desperate need of safe drinking water and sanitation facilities. Food is needed for 2.75 million people, while 2.96 million people are in urgent need of medical care.

UN disaster reduction chief to visit Pakistan