After Slow Start, Aid Finally Flowing To Pakistan
Crops destroyed, millions homeless, children hungry. The scenes from flood-hit Pakistan are wrenching — but the global response has been criticized as sluggish.
The United Nations says it has yet to raise half its $460 million target. The World Health Organization has received commitments for just 25 percent of the $56 million it has asked for. One aid group has called donations from European countries "feeble."
Relief agencies say they are puzzled by the lack of generosity, while analysts cite a mix of factors: the disaster's low death toll, its timing during the northern hemisphere's summer holidays — and fears that aid money will be squandered through corruption or make its way into the hands of the Taliban.
"We are perplexed as to why the international community has not responded as generously and as quickly as it can do," said Ian Bray, a spokesman for Britain-based aid agency Oxfam.
After a slow start, the U.N. and relief agencies say donations are now rising as the scale of the calamity becomes clear. But the response has been far less spectacular than the global generosity that followed Haiti's earthquake and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
According to Oxfam, donors committed $742 million and pledged a further $920 million within the first 10 days after the Haitian quake. For Pakistan, the figures over the same period were $45 million and $91 million.
Earlier this week, the U.N. said governments had pledged more than $150 million to Pakistan, but $300 million more was still needed. On Wednesday, it said funding had more than doubled in the last two days and the appeal was now 50 percent covered.
"We're moving in the right direction," said Elisabeth Byrs, a U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman.
However, U.N. officials describe a palpable sense of fatigue among donors, and even among themselves. Employees of the global body organized a "Haiti staff fund" for their private donations earlier this year but haven't done anything similar for Pakistan.
One factor is that individuals in many countries are feeling less generous as austerity sweeps Europe and North America.
Another is the gradual spread of the disaster — a flood is a creeping catastrophe rather than a sudden shock like an earthquake or a tsunami — and the relatively low death toll.
Since late July, floods triggered by monsoon rains have washed through Pakistan from its mountainous northwest, destroying hundreds of thousands of homes and an estimated 1.7 million acres (nearly 700,000 hectares) of farmland. Some 1,500 people have been killed, and 20 million are affected.
"The problem is that it's not as immediate as an earthquake," said Melanie Brooks of aid group CARE International. "It can't be captured on a photograph like in Haiti. Someone wading through the water is not the same as seeing someone pulling a relative out of the rubble."
Partly, it's a question of proximity. Many Americans saw Haiti as a neighbor and responded generously. Pakistan is farther away, both geographically and psychologically.
The U.S. government is the largest bilateral donor, however, donating more than $70 million and sending military helicopters to rescue stranded people and drop food and water.
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