Off the record: UN officials point finger at govt’s inaction

Despite such unfortunate incidents, there is no question of withdrawing any funding from the donors, says Bosan.

ISLAMABAD:

While pledging support to Pakistan in its fight against polio, the World Health Organisation and Unicef have expressed their concern over the country’s consistently forbearing approach towards the Taliban’s ban on vaccination, imposed in June this year.

“We do endorse the efforts of Pakistan in eradicating polio from the country, but in our view it’s not a favourable situation for donors and the UN to continue their work in a country where no concrete steps are being taken to stop militant factions from ruining immunisation campaigns,” a senior official of the UN said, on the condition of anonymity.

The Taliban had banned polio vaccination in the Waziristan region in June, terming it a “spying campaign” of the CIA following the Dr Shakeel Afridi episode, and linking its resumption with a halt to drone strikes.

The UN official added that, subsequently, the concerned UN agencies requested Islamabad to take notice of the deteriorating situation, or else the campaign would fail.

“The Pakistan government did not pay heed to our signals and requests and now the situation has reached a boiling point due to militancy-related activities,” he said.

Furthermore, he said that repeated requests were made to relevant law enforcement agencies of Pakistan to deploy armed forces to provide security to the staff, if, in case, police and Rangers failed to do so – but in vain.

Another point that was raised by the official was negotiating with the Taliban through effective communication to lift the ban. Since June this year, donors did not receive a hopeful status report from the social sector department of Fata, he said.

On the other hand, a Pakistani official associated with the polio immunisation campaign refuted the UN official’s reservations, and contended that providing security to the staff was the responsibility of the district administration.

Altaf Bosan, of the National coordinator for Prime Minister’s Polio Monitoring Cell, said, “Despite such unfortunate incidents, there is no question of withdrawing any funding from the donors as commitment for next three years had been made.”

Aftab Durrani of Social Sector department of Fata said “a proactive policy had been adopted to convince Taliban through jirgas, tribal elders delegations and the results would definitely come out of those engagements but it’s not a day-to-day business and the stakeholders should demonstrate patience to get positive results.”

Published in The Express Tribune, December 20^th, 2012.