UN Aid Conference
Donors pledge just $525 million for quake relief
UN warns against new wave of deaths

GENEVA—Half a billion dollars of new aid was promised to earthquake-stricken Pakistan on Wednesday after a new UN fund-raising drive, but survivors were left guessing how much would reach them before the winter snows.
The UN recorded an initial $525 million in new aid pledges by donor governments at an emergency conference held in Geneva designed to whip up support for the millions left without food or shelter in the freezing Himalayas after the October 8 quake.
“This will help energize further the struggle to reach the earthquake stricken communities in the Himalayas,” said UN emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland, spearheading the fund-raising drive, in a statement.
Officials warned that only part of the new money was earmarked for emergency relief like food, medicine and tents, with most being set aside for later reconstruction efforts.
The UN may not know for days to come whether it will reach its goal of $550 million in urgent relief, leaving an estimated 3 million homeless Pakistanis wondering whether the international community has responded in their hour of need, said Toby Lanzer, a UN fund-raising official.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who chaired the ministerial conference, said the need for funding was critical as the Himalayan winter approached.
“The scale of this tragedy almost defies our darkest imagination,” Annan told representatives of around 60 countries gathered in Geneva.
“All the while, the Himalayan winter approaches,” he said. “It is a winter without pity and we can no more slow its onset than we could stop the onslaught of the quake”.
Before the conference, only 12 percent of the $550 million had been committed. Some UN agencies ran out of cash, hindering operations.
As a result, many wounded were forced to submit to emergency amputations due to delayed evacuations, while hundreds of thousands more faced hunger and exposure, Egeland said. “We needed the money yesterday,” he said.
The quake killed at least 54,400 people, wounded around 74,000 and left up to three million people homeless, according to official estimates. Salman Shah, financial adviser to Pakistan’s prime minister, said relief efforts depended largely on the ability to provide shelter from the extreme winters in the mountainous region.
“If we are not able to move in the winterized shelters, we will be confronted with a major catastrophe,” he said. Shah urged international organizations to accelerate their efforts, in part to prevent extremist organizations from building support among the needy and neglected. He said they must hurry “so that organizations that may have their own agendas are not going to exploit the situation”.
The requests come shortly after aid agency Oxfam criticized western governments for giving too little, too late. “The logistical nightmare in Pakistan is bad enough without having to worry about funding shortfalls as well,” said Oxfam’s Policy Director Phil Bloomer in a statement.
“Governments meeting in Geneva today must put their hands in their pockets and pay their fair share. The public will be shocked that so many rich governments have given so little”. The Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies doubled its appeal target to $117 million.
“It is clear this is a major humanitarian disaster that requires the international community to scale up its already significant and timely response,” federation president Juan Manuel Suarez del Toro said in a statement.
The United Nations almost doubled its emergency aid request for quake-stricken Pakistan to $550 million on Wednesday as aid workers warned that thousands of survivors faced death from exposure and disease.
UN emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland unveiled the plea for cash as representatives from around 60 countries gathered in Geneva for an emergency donors conference to take stock of rescue efforts following the Oct. 8 quake.
Egeland said only 12 percent of the new amount had been committed so far and that some UN agencies had already run out of cash. As a result, many wounded were forced to submit to emergency amputations of arms and legs due to delayed evacuations, while hundreds of thousands more faced hunger and exposure as the Himalayan winter approached, Egeland told a media briefing.
“We needed the money yesterday,” he said. “We are amputating far too many limbs.” The quake killed at least 54,400 people, wounded around 74,000 and left up to three million people homeless, official estimates say.
Salman Shah, financial adviser to Pakistan’s prime minister, said relief efforts depended largely on the ability to supply shelter from the extreme winters in the mountainous region.
“If we are not able to move in the winterised shelters, we will be confronted with a major catastrophe,” he said. Shah urged international organisations to accelerate their efforts, in part to prevent extremist organisations from building support among the needy and neglected. He said they must hurry “so that organisations that may have their own agendas are not going to exploit the situation”. The requests for more aid come shortly after agency Oxfam slammed western governments for giving too little, too late.
“The logistical nightmare in Pakistan is bad enough without having to worry about funding shortfalls as well,” said Oxfam’s Policy Director Phil Bloomer in a statement aimed at officials attending the conference.
“Governments meeting in Geneva today must put their hands in their pockets and pay their fair share. The public will be shocked that so many rich governments have given so little,” Bloomer declared. Separately, the Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies doubled its own aid appeal to $117 million, saying thousands of earthquake survivors faced death unless they received winterised tents and blankets.
“It is clear this is a major humanitarian disaster that requires the international community to scale up its already significant and timely response, said Federation president Juan Manuel Suarez del Toro in a statement.
Quake-ravaged Pakistan is facing a second catastrophe and a new wave of deaths if the world does not come forward to help survivors of the Oct. 8 earthquake before winter sets in, aid officials said Wednesday.
The warning came as the United Nations appealed for nearly double what it previously sought from donor nations gathering Wednesday in Geneva to raise money for victims of the temblor, which is believed to have killed nearly 80,000 people — most in the high Himalayan mountains of northern Pakistan.
Jan Egeland, the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said before the meeting that millions of lives were at risk, an apparent reference to the 3.3 million people left homeless by the 7.6-magnitude quake.
“Catastrophe looms large,” said Rashid Khalikov, the UN humanitarian coordinator in this destroyed city. “The danger is there that the loss of life would be very high if the required help does not reach them” before winter.
Pakistan’s government raised the official death toll to 54,197 on Wednesday, with 78,000 injured. Central government figures have consistently lagged behind those by local officials, which put the death toll in Pakistan at about 78,000. A further 1,350 people died in Indian-held Kashmir.
Temperatures are already dipping below freezing in some areas of the mountainous north, and the weather is expected to worsen in coming weeks, cutting off remote valleys where some 800,000 people are believed to lack any shelter whatsoever. Khalikov told reporters the cold is already taking its toll on survivors, with winter still weeks off.
“What we have already in our hands is dramatic increases in respiratory diseases. There are a lot more cases of pneumonia, bronchitis and other kinds of diseases that happen when people are exposed to the cold,” he said. Aid workers have just five weeks to get six months’ worth of food supplies into the most remote areas of Pakistan before they are cut off, according to the UN World Food Program.
“We are racing against time. We need to win the race before snow falls,” said Simon Missiri, head of the Asia and Pacific operation of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
“We need more resources to save 2 million to 3 million lives and we need much more resources in the next few days,” Egeland said hours before the donor meeting. The UN is now asking for $549.6 million, up from the $312 million it initially called for.
Despite the fresh warnings, the United Nations has said it has received less than 30 percent of the $312 million it initially requested. Pakistan has said rebuilding the area will cost $5 billion. On Tuesday, the European Union proposed that member nations come up with another $96 million, on top of the $16.3 million already dispensed to Pakistan for emergency disaster release.
The donors meeting in Geneva comes as aftershocks continue to rattle the region. A magnitude-5.2 aftershock shook Islamabad, the northwestern city of Peshawar and the quake-hit town of Mansehra on Wednesday, but there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage. Fear of the spread of disease is also very real.
In the quake-devastated town of Bagh, a town about 40 miles southwest of Muzaffarabad, a patient fell ill with a suspected case of hemorrhagic fever, an aid official said Wednesday. Krist Teirlinck, of the aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, said the patient was in an isolation tent on the grounds of Bagh’s destroyed district hospital, in case the fever was contagious.—APP