GENEVA: Relief agencies are having trouble obtaining funds to help millions of flood victims as Pakistan suffers from an “image deficit”, a UN spokeswoman said on Monday.
“We note often an image deficit with regards to Pakistan among Western public opinion,” Spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Elizabeth Byrs said. “As a result, Pakistan is among countries that are poorly financed, like Yemen,” she added.
The UN has been struggling to obtain $460 million to provide emergency aid to six million victims of the country ravaged by heavy flooding. Only a fifth of the required funds have been pledged since the appeal was launched on August 11.
Spokesperson for the humanitarian group Care International Melanie Brooks stressed that the UN must explain to donor states that “the money is not going to go to the hands of the Taliban.”
“The victims are the mothers, the farmers, and children. But in the past, information linked to Pakistan has always been linked to the Taliban and terrorism,” she said.
Former ambassador and political analyst, Zafar Hilaly, said that the international community has good reasons for viewing Pakistan the way they do. “Look at what happened with the 2005 earthquake aid,” he said. Hilaly was of the view that the international community has given up on Pakistan. “The international community views us as a nuisance,” he told The Express Tribune. “They see us as a nation with a perverse interpretation of Islam...as an economic basket case.”
The European Union, meanwhile, says it is considering forming a task force to better coordinate its emergency aid in the future, after the French president criticised the union for its response following Pakistan’s devastating flooding. President Nicolas Sarkozy over the weekend criticised that EU’s $51 million in humanitarian aid following the flooding in Pakistan was insufficient.
Separately, Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg on Monday slammed the “pitiful” international response to the Pakistan floods, saying some countries were yet to grasp the scale of the disaster.
Clegg said while Britain had taken a leading role in the relief effort, other countries needed to do more. “The response from the international community as a whole, I have to say, has been lamentable. It’s been absolutely pitiful,” said Clegg. “One of the reasons may be because this is a disaster on a scale that people are struggling to understand. “We have already taken a lead in the international effort but we need other people to help.” The British government has earmarked 31.3 million pounds in aid, nearly 17 million of which has now been allocated.
When questioned about the “sluggish” response from the international community in terms of providing aid, Foreign Office spokesperson Abdul Basit said that they have yet to grasp the scale of the devastation the floods have caused. “One cannot compare the situation to previous natural disasters all over the world,” he told The Express Tribune, adding that Pakistan is still in its rescuing phase, which has been going on for 2 weeks.
(AFP WITH ADDITIONAL REPORTING FROM SHAYAN NAVEED)
Published in The Express Tribune, August 17th, 2010.
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