Pakistan

Humanitarian situation

UNICEF and partners are responding to three concurrent emergencies: the displacement of 734,000 people in the northwest due to insecurity, early recovery from the 2011 floods affecting over 5 million people in southern Sindh Province, and the 2012 floods affecting almost 5 million people in Northern Sindh, Southern Punjab and Balochistan. Overall, the situation of children is dire, with poor access to health care, acute malnutrition rates above internationally agreed-upon emergency levels¹, unsafe water and poor sanitation, which in combination puts the lives of children at significant risk.  Education, if accessible, is of poor quality, and the gaps and weaknesses in the child protective system expose the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children to violence, abuse and exploitation. In addition, as Pakistan is prone to recurrent natural disasters, emergency preparedness activities and response in 2013 will be of paramount importance, and must include efforts to strengthen resilience though national capacity development and preparedness.

Results from 2012

UNICEF originally appealed for US$88,400,000 and later reduced the requirements to US$69,577,000 following the end of the 2011 floods appeal. As of 31 October a total of US$26,458,809, or 38 per cent of the revised requirements, were received as contributions for humanitarian action in 2012. Funding received for the displacement due to insecurity was relatively low, which had an impact on the results achieved. UNICEF has provided maternal and child health care services to some 535,000 children in accessible emergency-affected areas during 2012. To prevent and respond to high levels of malnutrition, 412,500 children under 5 and 209,400 women were screened for malnutrition, with 30,716 children under 5 admitted to outpatient therapeutic programmes. To prevent water-related disease outbreaks, UNICEF and partners provided daily safe drinking water to 1.14 million people (including 458,000 children) in the emergency-affected areas. In flood-affected areas, 112,545 children (45 per cent girls) were enrolled in temporary learning centres; of these, over 101,000 children (45 per cent girls) were mainstreamed within the formal school system following the 2011 floods. Forty per cent of those children had never been to school. In the northwest, 7,130 children (48 per cent girls) were reached through 21 camp schools, and 428,100 children (40 per cent girls) were enrolled in school under the Welcome to School Initiative. In addition, through 313 Protective Learning and Community Emergency Services (PLaCES) centres, 81,120 children (46 per cent girls) and 28,375 women were reached with protection, psychosocial support and recreation services as well as life skills education. PLaCES and temporary learning centres (TLCs) aim to build the resilience of communities with an emphasis on child-centred disaster risk reduction interventions. The above results for children and women might have been even more impressive had it not been for the challenging funding situation in 2012 as well as the constantly changing security situation, which required maximum agility and flexibility in the programming approaches and outreach.

UNICEF funding requirements for 2013

UNICEF requires US$64,950,000 to provide lifesaving and critical programme interventions and cluster coordination functions at the federal and sub-national levels. The funding requirements are formulated within agreed-upon frameworks such as the humanitarian community’s Humanitarian Operational Plan and Early Recovery Action Framework for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province(KP) and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), as well as the Monsoon 2012 Humanitarian Operations Plan, in addition to potential needs arising from 2013 floods. The consequences of underfunding are grave, as lack of funding will greatly increase the vulnerability of emergency-affected children and women to potentially fatal diseases, undernutrition and social protection risks.