PNNOnline.org

The United Nations has announced that donor response to the devastating flooding in Pakistan has picked up, but contributions remain far from sufficient given the magnitude of the disaster.

To date, nearly $228 million in emergency aid has been donated by governments and humanitarian aid organizations — about half the amount requested by the UN in its Pakistan Initial Floods Emergency Response Plan — while another $42 million has been pledged. On Wednesday, the United States announced that it was increasing its emergency support to Pakistan from $75 million to $150 million following a trip by Senator John Kerry (D-MA) to the flood-ravaged country. Meanwhile, the Asian Development Bank said it would loan Pakistan $2 billion to help the country rebuild after the flooding, which has affected a fifth of the country and claimed as many as 1,600 lives.

Earlier this week, the UN increased its estimate of the number of people left homeless by the floods to 4.6 million, from an earlier estimate of 2 million, and warned that the number of people in need of medical care, food, and drinking water will grow. Some 3.2 million hectares of standing crops have been damaged or lost in the provinces of Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa and Punjab alone, while at least 200,000 head of livestock have been lost and many more are expected to die without proper food and veterinary support.

After visiting Pakistan last week to assess the disaster, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called an emergency UN session to discuss ways to boost international aid to the country. Member states are expected to adopt a resolution urging the international community “to extend full support and assistance” to Pakistan as it works “to mitigate the adverse impacts of the floods and to meet the medium- and long-term rehabilitation and reconstruction needs.”

“We thank donors for their generosity, and ask them to keep up this accelerated pace of donations,” said John Holmes, UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator. “The road ahead remains long. We should all also be ready for any increase in requirements….Watching this disaster unfold, the world increasingly understands its immense magnitude. I am glad that we now see a more positive response to the calls of the secretary-general and the humanitarian community for increased and faster funding.”