ISLAMABAD, Oct 23: The United Nations system in Pakistan feels so stressed working in the country on the 63rd UN Day that it has distributed ‘stress balls’ among its staff as a founding day memento to relieve their anxiety and is not holding any formal ceremony to celebrate the day on Friday.

The UN Day, which is celebrated globally to highlight the centrality of peace in human development, this year unfortunately in Pakistan reinforces the common perception that UN is over-reacting to the security situation by isolating itself behind fortified security walls losing its focus of promoting development and progress of the nation.

The frame of mind of the UN’s country team runs sharply in contrast to the pledge made in their media release of “reaffirming its support and commitment to achieving the millennium development goals in Pakistan”.

The UN has some 20 agencies working in health, population, education, environment, governance, disaster risk management, agriculture, rural development and poverty reduction in Pakistan.

The sombre mood on the UN Day was more a creation of the UN’s local leadership than the security situation in the capital as depicted by their choice of stress balls as founding day souvenir.

It was the UN that earlier this month raised the threat level perception for Islamabad to Level III, forcing its international staff to relocate their dependents, although the UN was never at any stage threatened by extremists.

Pakistan had to bear the brunt for the injudicious decision taken by Secretary General Ban Ki Moon on the recommendation of its Pakistan team.

The government did take its time to respond to the situation, but finally it had sternly asked the UN to review its decision of raising the threat level since the reasoning put forward by the UN could not be justified.

The difficult phase in the UN-Pakistan relations is certainly affecting the impetus of the development programmes as indicated by Resident Coordinator Fikret Akcura in his UN Day message in which he said:

“The role of the UN in Pakistan in these very challenging times is to ensure that the momentum of development work is maintained.”