UN announces $10m out of CERF for Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: A sum of $10 million out of the $500 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) was announced for Pakistan by the newly appointed UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian affairs and Emergency Relief coordinator (ERC) on Thursday.

“I will launch the first phase of the appeal next week which will include the emergency and early recovery phase,” said Valerie Amos while addressing a press conference after her three-day visit to Pakistan.

“We need to scale up at every level and the capacity needs to be met. We cannot work like we did in the past and new ways have to be adopted in terms of not only working but raising funds and getting newer donors on board.”

Out of the grand total of $307 million of the Pakistan Initial Floods Emergency Response Plan 2010 (PIFERP,) UN contributions have now reached up to a total of $39million making it the third largest donor.

Amos travelled to parts of Sindh and Nowshera, where she met people working on field and with the affected people. “Different parts of Pakistan are facing different challenges. Whereas the water has receded in K-P, there is water still standing in Sindh.

“There is new disaster happening every day. There are new settlements being setup,” she said. She added that the disaster is the biggest the humanitarian community has seen and is beyond the capacity of just one organization to tackle independently.

“We cannot put a date to stopping the assistance and we are also not only targeting any specific province; where ever the need is required either emergency of early recovery we are there,” she said. Amos also met with the Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir, Chairman NDMA Lt Gen (retd) Nadeem Ahmad and representatives of NGOs and the UN.

“We need to make sure of coordination with the government of Pakistan. I discussed the matter with them and they are equally involved as we are”

Published in The Express Tribune, September 10^th, 2010.