Armed conflict in Pakistan has claimed more than 15,000 lives since 2003, leaving scores of widowed women and orphaned children. To alleviate the impact of the conflicts on communities, USAID, through its three-year $25 million Conflict Victims Support Program, is working to provide a wide range of support for individuals, families and communities suffering losses from conflict-related violence.

The US government, through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), has awarded educational scholarships to 2,685 children orphaned or directly impacted by the conflict in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata). USAID’s Conflict Victims Support Program will be providing total of 4,000 educational scholarships to support conflict victims.

This support includes educational scholarships to the children who have lost or injured family members due to conflicts. The program collaborates with Pakistan’s telecom sector to utilise Mobile Financial Services in the disbursement of scholarship funding to conflict victims. The USAID Conflict Victims Support Program has been using this alternative service to reach out to beneficiaries who have limited or no access to banks. The program deposit scholarships to the mobile accounts of the students, or their guardians, which are used to complete their scholarship transaction with the utmost transparency.