United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs calls for more support for people affected by insecurity, disasters and malnutrition in Pakistan

Islamabad, May 08, 2014 (PPI-OT): UN Assistant Secretary-General (ASG) for Humanitarian Affairs, Ms Kyung-wha Kang concluded her mission to Pakistan today, stressing the need for more support to millions of people affected by insecurity, natural disasters and chronic malnutrition in the country.

Ms. Kang visited the Jalozai Camp for displaced people in Nowshera District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), which hosts an estimated 32,000 people displaced by insecurity. She met families who have been displaced for years, many still waiting to return home.

“The protracted suffering of 1 million people who are displaced in KP and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) is heart-wrenching. More needs to be done to assist them and the host communities whose resources have been stretched to the limit,” said Ms. Kang.

“Although Government authorities and the humanitarian community are providing humanitarian assistance and are helping people return home voluntarily, the majority of displaced people need assistance to cope daily.”

During her three-day mission, Ms. Kang also met senior government officials in Islamabad and Peshawar and discussed ways to enhance the close cooperation between the authorities and the international humanitarian community in assisting people in need.

Ms. Kang commended the Government of Pakistan for its significant support to vulnerable communities in KP and FATA, and also discussed ways to strengthen ongoing relief efforts and programmes in Tharparkar and the surrounding districts in Sindh, where communities continue to be affected by chronic malnutrition.

“Food insecurity remains a major concern in Pakistan where more than half of the population does not have enough to eat,” said ASG Kang, adding that nearly half of all children under five suffer from chronic malnutrition. “But we are only reaching about 25 per cent of the estimated 130,000 children who require life-saving nutrition support in drought-affected areas.”

Ms. Kang highlighted that more resources are needed to help humanitarian partners to establish more community-based malnutrition treatment sites, enhance emergency health services, build and rehabilitate water harvesting structures, and improve livelihood support in the affected areas.

The UN Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs also called for long-term disaster risk initiatives to help mitigate the impact of recurrent monsoon floods. Since 2010, over 30 million people have been affected by flooding during the monsoons, many of them multiple times.

“The solutions are there but we won’t be able to implement them unless all partners – the Government of Pakistan, the UN, civil society, and philanthropists alike – come together to urgently tackle these challenges,” said Ms. Kang.

For more information, contact:
Murtaza Shibli
Public information Officer
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA)
Serena Business Complex, 2nd Level, Khayaban-e-Soharwardy,
Sector G-5/1, Islamabad, Pakistan
Cell: +92-346-856-3642
Tel: +92-51-835-4893
Fax: +92-51-835-5891
Email: shibli@un.org
Web: https://pak.humanitarianresponse.info, www.unocha.org