A third of the country under water, more than 1,100 dead, 33 million affected in total… In Pakistan, the balance of the floods is unprecedented. Exceptional rainfall in June and July, during the monsoon season, caused the country’s main rivers to flood. In August, the situation got even worse and the country declared a state of emergency last Thursday.
Entire villages have been washed away and the inhabitants are trying to save what they can before reaching the refugee camps or the few places that were spared from the floods.
“It is very sad. All my belongings are submerged, many parts of my house are destroyed”, explains Nabi Dad, the water is up to my waist. “I am very worried, my children are hungry and sick. I myself suffer. That I have to do?”
Tense situation in refugee camps
Several places, such as schools or military bases, have been transformed into makeshift camps. The relief of being alive also rubs shoulders with the exhaustion of the difficult living conditions: scorching heat, power outages, lack of bathrooms and showers…
Despite the presence of volunteers, the distribution of food aid is also difficult. “People send humanitarian aid, but the distribution is not well organized at all, laments Yasmin. “There are regular fights and people have to fight to get food.”
“We have only eaten rice for the last three days,” said Malang Jan, 60. “I never thought I would have to live like this. We lost our paradise and now we are forced to live a life of misery.”
This year, 33 million people are affected directly or indirectly by floods in the country. They also left 1,136 dead and 1,634 injured according to the latest report. But this figure is likely to rise as relief has not yet been able to reach certain remote villages in the mountainous regions of the north of the country.
Call for donations to help the five million most affected
On Tuesday, the United Nations and the Pakistani government launched an appeal for donations of 160 million dollars to help those most affected. This economic aid should make it possible to finance an emergency plan for the next six months, in order to first provide basic services (health, food, drinking water and housing) to the 5.2 million most affected people, explained Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs.
“There is an enormous need to help all these families who are in a state of total vulnerability, and this in areas where they were already very precarious. In the flooded areas, most of the time, we had 40% of the children who were already suffering from malnutrition before the floods,” Catherine Weibel, spokesperson for Unicef in Pakistan, tells BFMTV.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif promised that “every penny (of international aid) will be spent transparently and go to those in need.” He explained that they were “the worst floods in the history of Pakistan”. He often compares the situation to the 2010 floods, which claimed just under 2,000 recorded victims.
“The global climate has crossed a threshold”
The Pakistani Minister for Global Warming, Sherry Rehman, also spoke on the subject.
“It’s just a big ocean, there’s no dry place that we can pump water from,” he said. “It’s turned into a crisis of unimaginable proportions.”
For her, this phenomenon is explained by the “tipping point” reached by global warming. “It is time for the major emitters of greenhouse gases to review their policy. We have clearly crossed a threshold. Not only Pakistan, but several countries. The global climate has crossed a threshold sooner than expected, and we are at point 0, when the relief takes place”, said the minister.
Pakistan received twice as much rain as usual, according to the weather service. In the southern provinces (Balochistan and Sindh), the most affected, the rains were more than four times higher than the average of the last 30 years.
Source: BFM TV
