Monday, August 23, 2010

Pakistan is not Getting Sufficient Aid for its Flood Victims

Louis-George Arsenault, director of emergency operations for Unicef in New York, has criticized the world community for not coming in forward to support Pakistan in its worst crisis. The country is suffering from its natural disaster in history but international response has been almost lukewarm.
He said, "One of the major challenges that we have which is quite extraordinary is the lack of level of support from the international community.
Right now, our level of needs in terms of funding is huge compared to what we've been receiving, even though this is the largest, by far, humanitarian crisis we've seen in decades."

BBC News talked to some experts about the matter and some of them stated that Pakistani government needed to deal with the matter of transparency. There is a perception in some parts of the world that corruption is high in the country.
Dr Elizabeth Ferris of Brookings Institution said to BBC, "People are always sceptical about their money reaching flood victims, particularly in countries with reputations for corruption. But Haiti didn't have a very good reputation in this regard. [Pakistan] President [Asif Ali] Zardari trip to Europe [during the floods] was not a good move. For a few days, that was the 'story' of the Pakistani floods, which doesn't inspire people to be generous, particularly in this economic climate."

Pakistan is now in dire needs of foreign aid. Many people are suffering from food shortage in the flood affected areas.

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