KARACHI, Dec 20: A researcher from the University of London delivered a lecture on Wednesday on humanitarian aid management in response to the October 2005 earthquake disaster in Pakistan. The lecture was attended by faculty members and students of NED University of Engineering and Technology.
The speaker from the UK, Dr Naeem Khalid, who is engaged in some studies on humanitarian emergencies, NGOs and development management in the earthquake-hit areas of Pakistan, said the relationship between the international humanitarian aid architecture and responses to national emergencies was an intimate one.
According to him, the political economy of the system and the features of structural shifts of what is known as ‘new humanitarianism’ have contributed to the humanitarian responses in the earthquake that hit Pakistan and a wider region more than a year ago.
He presented a slide detailing some statistics about the earthquake, which said that about 30,000 square kilometre area in the northern parts of Pakistan and Azad Kashmir, with a population of 3.5 million, was affected, with more than 73,000 people dead and 79,000 injured. As many as 400,153 houses were damaged and destroyed, while about 2.3 million people suffered food shortages. The earthquake affected 955,000 children and 800,000 women in ages ranging from 15 to 49 years.
Maintaining that the rate of loss was extremely high, Dr Khalid said that although the focus of the aid community was on Pakistan, the scale of response was not up to the mark. The government can also be blamed for that as it failed to have a developed disaster centre, a requirement by the UN much before the occurrence of the quake, he claimed.
Talking of priorities and disaster management strategies during his talk, he also mentioned that in Kashmir affected people had told him that personnel of the armed forces were around after the earthquake but they surrounded their area from security point of view and not for the purpose of rescue or relief. There were hesitations on the part of NGOs as well until the donors and aid community indicated that they were alive to the situation and provided support in terms of cash and kind, he said, basing his statement on his study undertaken in the earthquake affected areas.
He told the audience that there was also confusion and conflicts on the issue of protection of affected children. There was one school which insisted on having an institutionalised approach through setting up orphanage houses. Another view was that there should be a community-based care for children, he said, adding that in both cases there was a need to authenticate the moves by ground facts.
He observed that humanitarian aid workers and organisations should observe some flexibility while addressing the plight of natural disaster affected people instead of going by the book only. There were a lot of areas where people accumulated funds and commodities, while, on the other hand, there were people who did not get what they needed, he concluded.
The lecture session was organised by the British Council Karachi and the Cowasjee Earthquake Centre of the university. Director of British Council Marcus Gilbert and Pro- Vice-Chancellor of the university Prof Muzaffar Mahmood specially attended the session.