MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan, 19 November 2005 — UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan toured quake-hit northern Pakistan yesterday as international aid groups warned that quake survivors still need emergency help even as donor nations gather to discuss long-term reconstruction needs.
Accompanied by Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Annan viewed maps and listened to a briefing by army commanders before visiting the Thuri Park tent camp that houses 2,000 people in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir’s main city of Muzaffarabad.
Annan was also to observe vaccinations of children against polio by UN agencies working with Pakistani charities as part of a drive to immunize 1.2 million children in the quake-affected area.
Annan earlier said he expected both governments and private-sector donors to “be generous, to give and give willingly.”
“We need more resources, not just for the emergency, but recovery and reconstruction,” Annan said, appealing to governments, the private sector and individual donors to contribute. Annan is the highest-profile leader scheduled to attend today’s reconstruction conference in Islamabad.
Britain announced yesterday it would pledge $120 million at the conference for post-earthquake reconstruction, to be disbursed over three years. Britain has already contributed $57 million for disaster relief, the British Embassy said in a statement.
Yet with snow already falling in the quake zone, time is fast running out to prevent a second wave of deaths from exposure, hunger and disease, six of the world’s largest aid relief organizations said in a joint appeal.
“We have the chance to save thousands of lives, but the world community must act now,” said Cassandra Nelson, emergency spokeswoman for US-based charity Mercy Corps. “This response needs more money.”
The Oct. 8 magnitude-7.6 quake left more than 87,000 dead, mostly in Pakistani Kashmir. About 1,350 died in India’s portion of the Himalayan territory, which is claimed in its entirety by both countries but divided between them by a cease-fire line.
Musharraf has appealed for more than $5 billion in reconstruction and relief aid.
The UN is stressing the need for more financial support to sustain its emergency relief effort through the winter, saying cash in hand is more important than long-term pledges.
However, UN agencies have so far received cash donations of only $119 million, with another $40 million in pledges, out of $550 million it has been seeking since last month to finance emergency relief over six months.
The quake destroyed the homes of about 3 million people, leaving hundreds of thousands living in flimsy tents. An unknown number have no shelter at all, although the country’s top relief official, Maj. Gen. Farooq Ahmed Khan, said Thursday that aid had been delivered to almost all those affected.
Among the most pressing needs are for warmer shelters to guard against nighttime temperatures that can drop to minus 12 degrees Celsius (10 degrees Fahrenheit), aid groups said.
Exposure to cold weather is resulting in a rising number of acute respiratory infections, while bad water and sanitation produce thousands of cases a day of diarrhea, the skin infestation scabies and other communicable diseases, the groups said.
Infants and children — more than 2.2 million of whom were affected by the quake — are most at risk, they said.
“More funding is needed immediately to provide basic shelter for tens of thousands of people facing the prospect of a harsh winter without adequate shelter,” said Jack Norman, Catholic Relief Services country representative for Pakistan. “If the response from the international community is too little or too late, we’ll be witnessing a second tragedy.”
But for some survivors in Pakistan’s remote and conservative areas, death is preferable to seeking help, thereby exposing their womenfolk to strangers at relief camps.
Abdul Hameed, who lost his home in the earthquake, says he would rather his family die from the cold than descend from the 10,000-foot-high peak in Pakistan’s north and approach relief camps for help.
In the deeply conservative rural and tribal Pakistani villages where women strictly adhere to wearing a “purdah,” or veil, it is considered a sin if they are seen by people they do not know, even rescue workers.
“We are Pushtoon people. For us, the women’s honor matters more than life,” Hameed, 28, told AFP at Meira tented camp, which is believed to be the biggest in Shangla district.
Hameed descended to the Meira relief village on bank of the Indus River flowing along the Silk Road linking Pakistan with China to get blankets, food and medicines but then returned to Koshgram village in Allai peak.
“What will I do with life if our women are dishonored down in the valley? Clerics told people up in the hilltop that there is no respect for women (down there),” Hameed said. He said his mother, wife, and sister remained in the mountains.
“We feel safer with them in the hills,” he said. A cleric told the survivors on the peak that fleeing the disaster-hit areas was “un-Islamic,” 35-year-old Bakht Taj, a survivor at the tented village, told AFP.
“I am not coming down simply because our women’s dignity will come under threat. I know winter is very harsh. I have lost my home to the quake and I know it is not possible to live in a tent in harsher cold weather,” he said. “But this is not question of life. This is the question of our women’s honor.”
Federal relief coordinator Amir Muqqam warned that around 40,000 survivors on the hilltop in Allai town in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province would risk death if they did not come down to the valley.
Aid officials have raised a tent city awaiting their arrival to see the winter out, with snow expected to blanket the peak any day now. But for survivors in an area where girls are segregated from boys and not allowed outdoors after reaching puberty, the question of honor is more important than life or death.
— Additional input from agencies.
