ISLAMABAD: Four million children are fighting for survival near contaminated and stagnant flood waters in Pakistan, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has warned, as Islamabad seeks international aid and loans for a recovery bill amounting to $16.3 billion.
Waters are still receding from the floods caused by monsoon rains and melting glaciers that killed at least 1,700 people, displaced around 8 million and destroyed key infrastructure last summer.
While “the rains have ended…to a great degree, so has media attention,” UNICEF Representative in Pakistan, Abdullah Fadil, told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday, adding that with homes destroyed, children were facing a “bitter winter, without decent shelter”.
Last summer’s flooding is widely regarded as Pakistan’s greatest climate disaster, with villages reportedly turned into islands and many children orphaned and families still living under scraps of plastic in freezing conditions.
In flood-affected districts, around 1.6 million children were already suffering from severe acute malnutrition, while another six million children suffered from stunting, a condition which can cause irreversible damage to children’s brains, bodies and immune systems.
Post floods, this situation is expected to worsen exponentially, Fadil warned.
“27 thousand schools have been washed away,” he said, but “UNICEF’s current appeal of $173 million is less than half funded”.
A total of $9 billion, pledged last week by international donors to help Pakistan recover from the catastrophe, was welcomed by Fadil, who emphasized that “children must be at the center of recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts.”
The UNICEF spokesperson said real economic recovery and sustained growth could only be achieved if the necessary investments to meet the immediate and longer-term needs of children were made, calling for investment in building human capital and resiliency, particularly in rural Sindh and Balochistan where much of the devastation occurred.
“Pakistan is a known climate hotspot, and it is only a matter of time before another large-scale climate disaster strikes the country’s children,” he warned.
Earlier this month, UN chief António Guterres reiterated the need to help developing countries such as Pakistan become more resilient to the impacts of climate change.
The UN chief insisted that the international banking system needs radical reform in favor of developing countries, to “right a fundamental wrong”.
The UN development agency, UNDP, has warned that an additional nine million people are at risk of being pushed into poverty, on top of the 33 million affected by last summer’s floods in Pakistan.
