UN lobbies for more aid for Pakistan's displaced persons

[Lahore_Real_Estate]

Wednesday, April 14, 2010
UNITED NATIONS: A UN envoy pressed donors Tuesday for urgently needed funds for an estimated 1.3 million displaced persons in strife-torn northwest Pakistan amid warnings that some aid projects may have to be cut.

Jean-Maurice Ripert, the UN special envoy in charge of humanitarian affairs for Pakistan, said he had just met donors to complain about inadequate funding for the 537-million-dollar UN humanitarian appeal launched in February for Pakistan's internally displaced people (IDPs).

"We are becoming a little bit nervous and worried about the financing," he told reporters at UN headquarters, warning that there was no funding at all for sectors such as agriculture or education in Pakistan's northwest and rugged tribal regions.

"I met with donors this morning to launch a new appeal to cover this," he added.

Monday, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Pakistan, Martin Mogwanja, said in Islamabad that the world body had so far received only 106 million dollars from the donors, barely 20 percent of the total appeal.

"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," Mogwanja said.

Northwest Pakistan has faced one of the world's worst humanitarian crises in recent years in the wake of brutal fighting between government troops and strongholds of Islamist insurgents linked to the Al-Qaeda network.

Last year, a total of 3.1 million people were displaced from their homes in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province and the semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the Afghan border.

Ripert, a former French ambassador to the UN who was assigned as UN envoy to Pakistan last October, said the number of IDPs was now down to roughly 1.3 million, most of them sheltered in host communities and only 126,000 living in camps.

Ripert, who for security reasons lives in Pakistan only two weeks every month, also acts as special adviser to the UN secretary general in the Friends of Democratic Pakistan group.

The group of 20 countries and six international organizations, including the United States, Britain, France, China, the United Nations, the European Union and the World Bank, aims to support economic and social development as a means of stabilizing the nuclear-armed south Asian country.

Ripert said the group would hold a ministerial session in Brussels next July 12 and 13 at the invitation of the European Union.

The meeting would focus on prospects for key reforms to restore state authority and promote the rule of law, and for tackling the energy and water scarcity crises in Pakistan's northwest, he added.