This was not the best of Eid tidings. Faced with a huge shortfall in funding for this year's flood relief in Sindh, four international aid agencies have warned that they would be forced to cut back on relief work for the nine million devastated by the monsoon if there is no fresh monetary flow.
Anticipating a looming catastrophe — a public health crisis and a risk of malnutrition — Oxfam, Save the Children, Care International and the Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development (ACTED) issued an urgent appeal on Wednesday to the donor community to step up funding.
Let alone aid agencies, even United Nations programmes have apparently been affected. As against the U.N.'s $357 million appeal, it has received only $96.5 million till date.
Underfunded, says U.N.
According to U.N. spokesperson Stacey Wilson, “The 2011 floods flash appeal remains distressingly underfunded with a 73 per cent shortfall and if more funding is not received, relief supplies will run out within weeks which impacts U.N. agencies from providing life-saving clean water, sanitation, food, shelter and healthcare.”
While Oxfam received only 36 per cent of its targeted funding, Save the Children raised just 35 per cent of its global appeal for the Sindh floods. Care International faces a shortfall of 91 per cent so much so that country director Waleed Rauf claimed the organisation was using its own resources to fund the flood crisis. “Due to a funding shortfall, we have only reached roughly 10 per cent of the targeted 150,000 in need of emergency health care in the areas where we and our local partners operate.”
It is the same story everywhere. Oxfam's country director Neva Khan's lament was that “though we have reached over one million people, we have not been able to provide everything we had planned to in the communities we are working. Due to a lack of funds in certain cases, we have had to prioritise. If funds don't arrive soon, Oxfam will have to continue making such tough choices and will have to cut back on its efforts after December. In circumstances like these where needs are mammoth as compared to the aid available, cutting back aid will lead to a catastrophe.” Similarly, ACTED does not see itself in a position to provide help beyond March 2012.
Asked how long Save the Children could continue with its operations in Sindh under present funding, country director David Wright said: “With us, it is not so much about how much longer we can keep our assistance going, but rather that we are already punching below our weight in this response as a result of lack of funding.”
While his organisation began work on distribution of emergency shelter items within a day of President Asif Ali Zardari calling for international help, those on the ground were idle for half the time within just three weeks as Save the Children did not have the resources to keep them supplied with shelter kits to distribute. “We have only reached 33,000 people when we should have gotten to 150,000 at this stage. Similarly, our health activities have only reached 45,000 people three months after the onset of the floods whereas we would have expected to reach over 250,000. So the harm has already been done in terms of the amount of people we can reach.”
Crisis factors
Donor fatigue, lack of enough media attention, multiple conflicting global priorities, financial problems faced by some of the regular donor countries, and a trust deficit in governance structures have all contributed to this slow flow of funds for a flood situation that has affected more people than the tsunami in 2004.
Also this was an unfolding crisis — attributed by several experts within the country to a sheer lack of preparedness for the monsoon — and not something sudden like an earthquake or a tsunami. The death toll was relatively low and since donors had coughed up aid for Pakistan for last year's floods and conflict-related displacements in preceding years, Ms Khan feared donors either felt they had done their bit for this country or did not realise the scale of the disaster.
Had it not been for last year's floods — which inundated a third of the country — this would have been the biggest disaster ever to affect Pakistan, according to Mr. Wright. Data provided by the National Disaster Management Authority shows that three lakh people are still living in 800 camps three months after the floods and it will take another month for water to recede from four districts.
U.S., the largest contributor
As with last year's floods, the U.S. has been the biggest contributor to the U.N. appeal though the natural calamity coincided with a major strain in Washington-Islamabad relations over the latter's “institutional links” with terrorism. Over 35 other countries have also chipped in but India is not one of them though relations between the two neighbours are on the mend.
In fact, the absence of an Indian response despite the new-found bonhomie has raised a few eyebrows but since the Sindh floods faded from the collective memory of the nation and the media rather quickly, not much attention was paid to this. This time, Pakistan gave up its earlier reticence and invited Indian diplomats for the Foreign Office briefing on the flood where assistance was sought in general from all present.
This was a far cry from last year when the Indian High Commission was not invited to any Foreign Office briefing on the floods. While Indian officials remained tightlipped on why the appeal was ignored this time round, Pakistan's reluctance to accept the aid offered by India last year — New Delhi was finally asked to route it through the U.N. — is being cited as a possible reason.
