UN calls for emergency aid

THE United Nations and the Pakistani government launched an emergency appeal for $160 million (£137.27m) on Tuesday (30) to help those hardest hit by the devastating floods in the country.

The funds will provide 5.2 million people with food, water, sanitation, emergency education, protection and health support, UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said in a video statement, calling the flooding a “colossal crisis”.

The aid, covering the initial six months of the crisis response, will also help to avoid outbreaks of cholera, and to provide food aid to mothers and children.

It will also provide assistance to refugees, the disabled and the elderly and facilitate schemes to reunite families separated by the disaster.

“Pakistan is awash in suffering. The Pakistani people are facing a monsoon on steroids – the relentless impact of epochal levels of rain and flooding,” Guterres said.

He branded the floods a “climate catastrophe”, saying that south Asia was one of the world’s worst climate crisis hotspots.

“People living in these hotspots are 15 times more likely to die from climate impacts,” he said.

“As we continue to see more and more extreme weather events around the world, it is outrageous that climate action is being put on the back burner as global emissions of greenhouse gases are still rising, putting all – everywhere – in growing danger.”

Guterres’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric told a press briefing on Monday (29) the UN had already mobilised about $7m (£6m) by redirecting existing programmes and resources, while an additional $3m (£2.57m) has been released by the UN emergency response fund.