Half-million people aided

Over a half-million people from Bangladesh and four other countries recovered from natural disasters with China’s help last year, according to statistics released during a United Nations Development Programme workshop on Wednesday at the Chinese Academy of Governance in Beijing.

The workshop, themed South-South Cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative, was designed to share results of China-supported disaster-recovery efforts in cooperation with UNDP in five countries, and to serve as a platform for developing countries to draw expertise and technology from China.

The Chinese government, together with UNDP, has provided support for recovery and reconstruction efforts in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, the Commonwealth of Dominica and Antigua and Barbuda under the SouthSouth Cooperation Assistance Fund last year, when natural disasters affected their lands and destroyed people’s lives.

Xu Haolin, director of the UNDP Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific, said there has been a growing realization that humanitarian interventions need to be supplemented and followed by short-, medium- and longterm recovery interventions.

He said the recovery means not only upgrading damaged infrastructure, but also strengthening governance systems, improving basic services, diversifying livelihoods and providing social protections.

Under such an understanding, over 470,000 people in Bangladesh and Nepal have received shelter, emergency kits and relief packages.

In Bangladesh, the Chinese government provided emergency aid to 225,000 people affected by floods and building materials to over 14,000 households in the north of the country in 2017.

More than 18,000 Pakistani children have received new school facilities and managed to go back to school in 2017 with China’s recovery support, according to UNDP’s figures.

Suman Kumar Karna, a project chief at the National Reconstruction Authority in Nepal, appreciated China’s aid when a flood struck the country last year, one of the worst in 60 years.