Five-fold increase in UN appeal: PM Shehbaz underscores need for global engagement

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Wednesday expressed gratitude to United Nations (UN) Secretary General Antonio Guterres for his “leadership in articulating needs of people affected by disastrous floods.”

He was referring to nearly five-fold increase in appeal amount requested by Guterres to the international community on Tuesday. The UN and the government of Pakistan launched the revised flash appeal of an urgent $816 million to swiftly respond to the needs of the people affected by unprecedented climate-induced floods in the country.

“Revised UN appeal for $816 million for flood victims underscores need for continued global engagement,” said PM Shehbaz in a tweet. “With food and health crisis becoming graver, we need to ramp up action.”

Global community told: Pakistan is out of money to spend on flood recovery

The revised '2022 Pakistan Floods Response Plan' (FRP) was shared with UN member states and humanitarian organisations on Tuesday in Geneva where Minister for Climate Change Sherry Rehman represented Pakistan while Minister for Economic Affairs Sardar Ayaz Sadiq and Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar participated in the live ceremony from Islamabad.

“This increase is a reflection of the rising needs and the unprecedented scale of destruction caused by the current climate-induced disaster which has affected a population of 33 million, cost 1,600 lives and threaten hundreds of thousands more as a second disaster looms within the first one,” said a joint press release, issued simultaneously in Islamabad and Geneva on Tuesday.

Over 2 million homes have been destroyed or damaged, forcing people to live under open skies exposed to threats of dengue, malaria, and the biting cold of the fast-approaching winter.

More than 1,500 health and support facilities are badly damaged and unable to respond to the growing needs. 13,000 kms of roads are badly damaged, making it extremely difficult – and, at times, impossible - to reach families in need.

According to the joint press release, the focus of this appeal is on the provision of urgent and lifesaving humanitarian assistance and protection to 9.5 million people until 31 May 2023, with a focus on the 34 most-affected districts in Balochistan, Sindh, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, and Punjab.

This prioritisation is based on the number of houses damaged and destroyed, available projections of water level changes, and the population of displaced people in the districts. It aims to enable a more cohesive response for people in areas that have been most severely affected, and to foster a focused, multi-sectoral approach, it added.

Sherry Rehman headlined the unimaginable scale of loss and damage caused by unprecedented climate-induced floods in Pakistan.

She highlighted that the scale of the catastrophe had gone beyond all previous climate disasters, affecting a population larger than the size of many countries.