News
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Pakistan aid projects in jeopardy: UN* UN humanitarian coordinator says UN has received only $106 million aid so far, which is 20% of total appeal
ISLAMABAD/PESHAWAR: The United Nations on Monday warned it may have to shut down aid projects in Pakistan, after receiving only a fifth of the funds requested in an appeal for more than half a billion dollars.
The UN launched the $537 million appeal in February to feed and assist more than one million people displaced by conflict in the northwest and in border areas with Afghanistan.
“The response by the international community to this appeal is inadequate,” UN humanitarian coordinator for Pakistan, Martin Mogwanja, told a news conference in Islamabad.
“Humanitarian actors responding to the needs of the people are concerned that some of the projects may have to be suspended because of lack of finances,” he said, according to AFP.
Aid inadequate: Mogwanja said the UN had so far received only $106 million from donors, which is just 20 percent of the total appeal.
He said the UN urgently needed the funding, with 1.3 million people still displaced in the northwest and the rugged tribal regions.
Mogwanja stressed that displacement had not ended and there were more people on the move in the tribal regions of Orakzai and Kurram.
Separately, officials said that more than 45,071 families – 270,426 people – have fled the fighting between the security forces and the Taliban in Orakzai and Kurram agencies.
“Overall, more than 45,071 families, a total of 270,426 people, have been registered as internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Kurram and Orakzai since November 2009, including 26,447 families since February this year when the military operations escalated,” Qaiser Khan Afridi, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) told Daily Times.
The security forces launched an assault against the Taliban in Orakzai Agency last month. Orakzai is a stronghold of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leader Hakeemullah Mehsud, whom US officials believe to have died in a drone attack in January. The military reportedly said that it has no evidence of Hakeemullah being in the area.
Nearly two million IDPs have returned home, but uncertainty continues to exist in the wake of ongoing clashes between army troops and the Taliban in most of the northwest and the tribal regions bordering Afghanistan. akhtar amin and saboor khan/afp
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk