UNITED NATIONS, Oct 10: The United Nations will issue an emergency aid ‘flash appeal’ to deal with the effects of Saturday’s earthquake in Pakistan, Ed Tsui, Director of New York office of the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs, announced on Monday.
The appeal to be issued on Tuesday is expected to be for a comprehensive disaster relief fund amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. The UN will ask its 191 member states to contribute in cash and other relief aid needed to bring relief to the people impacted by the disaster.
Mr Tsui told a press conference that Jan Egeland, the UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, would travel to Pakistan on Tuesday to assess the magnitude of the disaster. He is expected to visit Muzaffarabad and other areas affected the most by the earthquake.
Mr Tsui announced that so far 12 countries –- China, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Turkey, Russia, Singapore, Republic of Korea, Greece, Iran and Poland — were involved in the search and rescue operations in Pakistan.
In a statement, a UN spokesman said the UN agencies were working round the clock to bring relief to survivors of the earthquake in Pakistan, readying an airlift of vitamin-fortified lifesaving food for 240,000 victims and sending in convoys of trucks with emergency supplies ranging from blankets to water purification equipment.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan praised the “rapid and large response” by the international community to the disaster.
He called on all international actors “to work together to achieve full coordination of all international efforts in support of the national rescue efforts.”
The World Food Programme is mobilizing urgent relief, including a planned airlift to Pakistan of 120 tons of high-energy biscuits, vital in the first days of a natural disaster when survivors have no means to cook their own food.
“Many of these people have already been hit by huge natural disasters this year. This makes it even more imperative that there are no delays in the international community’s response,” WFP director for the Middle East, Central Asia and Eastern Europe Amir Abdulla said, noting that the victims had suffered unprecedented rains and snowfall last winter, followed by floods and avalanches in February.
WFP logistics expertise would be essential in identifying the fastest way to provide emergency relief to the survivors, many of whom were located in remote, mountainous areas, and helicopters and trucks would be needed to reach towns and villages cut off by landslides, the agency said.
With its first trucks rolling towards Mansehra, loaded with blankets, children’s clothing, water containers and plastic tarpaulins, the UN Children’s Fund appealed for $20 million to provide initial emergency relief to children and families who survived the quake.
“This appeal means immediate action to save children’s lives,” Unicef Executive Director Ann M. Veneman said in New York. “Needed assistance includes medical care, clean water, nutritional food for infants, clothing, and shelter — the things that matter most in the critical few weeks after a disaster like this when children and their families have lost everything.”
Another Unicef convoy is en route from Karachi with water purification equipment, nutritional food for children, soap, shelter supplies and children’s boots and sweaters.
The agency is moving in additional staff and supplies from its regional offices and has provided logistics and supplies for frontline Pakistani surgical teams being dropped by helicopter into the most remote areas.
“It’s difficult to access at the best of times, and its people have very few extra resources,” Unicef chief of operation in Pakistan Omar Abdi said of the mountainous region. “There have been overnight rains and hail which have added to the misery for people sleeping exposed, too afraid to enter whatever shelter remains. This has also created more landslides, further hampering aid efforts.”
