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Blocked roads, snow, lack of funding could kill Pakistani quake survivors – UN

Blocked roads, snow, lack of funding could kill Pakistani quake survivors – UN

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Blocked roads, snow and a serious lack of funding could create a death trap for tens of thousands of people who survived this month’s devastating earthquake in Pakistan, the United Nations World Food Programme warned today in the latest gloomy projection on the disaster.

Blocked roads, snow and a serious lack of funding could create a death trap for tens of thousands of people who survived this month’s devastating earthquake in Pakistan, the United Nations World Food Programme warned today in the latest gloomy projection on the disaster.

“It must be clear to everybody that many people could die if we do not move more quickly,” WFP Regional Director for the Middle East, Central Asia and Eastern Europe, Amir Abdulla, said. “We must have much more funding, much sooner, to gain as much speed as humanly possible in the face of gigantic logistics difficulties.”

In New York, a UN spokesman announced that Secretary-General Kofi Annan heads tonight to Geneva, where tomorrow he will open a ministerial-level donors’ conference to boost international assistance for quake relief efforts.

At the General Assembly, its President, Jan Eliasson, voiced confidence that Member States convening in Geneva will “make adequate funds available so that humanitarian agencies can respond as quickly as possible.”

Mr. Eliasson cautioned that there will be a “further dramatic rise in the death toll” if aid is not delivered in the coming three weeks before the first snowfall is expected. He called for urgent efforts to provide basic supplies – winter tents, blankets, sleeping bags, stoves, kitchen sets, fuel, clean water and vaccinations – to those in need.

As the WFP warned that a critical window of just five weeks remains for it to pre-position food stocks to last six months for tens of thousands of people in the most remote areas that may be completely cut off by the onset of winter, the UN refugee agency said it was adding a chartered Boeing 747 cargo to its emergency airlift of supplies.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) only $90 million has so far been contributed or pledged to the $312 Flash Appeal the world body has launched to aid victims of the quake which has killed more than 51,000 and injured more than 74,000, with the numbers expected to rise.

Since the massive earthquake struck on 8 October, WFP has been able to send nearly 3,000 tons of food using planes, helicopters, trucks, rafts and pack mules to hundreds of thousands of affected people in one of the most rugged terrains in the world.

But the agency has so far received only about 13 per cent of its $56-million share of the flash appeal to help feed about 1 million people until mid-April.

“People stricken by grief and loss – and further traumatised by continuing aftershocks – are expressing frustration and anger over their inability to meet their basic needs,” WFP said. “In remote mountainous areas southeast of Muzaffarabad, angry residents expressed their concern about the slowness of relief.”

The most seriously affected areas are in Pakistan-administered Kashmir in the foothills of the Himalayas, where thousands of villages and isolated settlements are scattered over 28,000 square kilometres and most roads and bridges were destroyed. The temperature has already fallen under the freezing point in many places at night, but in less than three weeks it will become much colder and many areas will become more difficult to reach.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said today that together with its partners it was speeding up the delivery and distribution of hundreds of tonnes of tents, blankets and other relief supplies from around the world. A joint airlift by the agency and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from Turkey has so far flown 22 sorties and approximately 250 tonnes of aid.

“This is a race against time and the weather,” UNHCR spokesperson Jennifer Pagonis told a news briefing in Geneva. So far the agency has received only $4 million of the $22 million sought for this operation.

Concerning the UN's Flash Appeal, the UN has now received $67 million in contributions and pledges of $35 million, according to a spokesman for the world body.

Addressing the plenary one day after the UN marked six decades of existence, the Swedish diplomat said: “Our response to this disaster will be no less than a measure of our common humanity. Yesterday we celebrated the 60th birthday of the United Nations. Tomorrow, in Geneva, we must show the world what this Organization, and the international community, can deliver.”