Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

Flood-affected Pakistanis in need of continued assistance - UN

5 October 2010 – The United Nations refugee agency today cautioned that 11 weeks since the first floods struck Pakistan, large numbers of those affected are still in critical need of continued humanitarian assistance, including many needy people the agency was supporting even before the flood emergency.

In Sindh province in the south, flooding is still occurring, Adrian Edwards, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told reporters in Geneva, with almost a third of the region’s more than 30 million residents affected. About 1.6 million people in Sindh remain displaced.

Manchar Lake in Sindh, the largest freshwater lake in Pakistan, has overflowed in the past two weeks creating further displacement and new pressures on already overcrowded camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs).

Mr. Edwards added that UNHCR had assisted some 192,800 flood-displaced people in Sindh with tents, plastic sheeting, and other relief items.

Most of UNHCR’s core populations of concern – 1.7 million refugees and 1.1 million people displaced by conflict – are in other regions of Pakistan, namely Balochistan and Khyber Phaktunkhwa. They too have been affected by the flooding and by the diversion of resources to the wider flood-affected population, according to Mr. Edwards.