The c.g. of the UN has called for “massive investment” to help the country rebuild after the summer’s devastating floods
Pakistan, still struggling to cope with the effects of last year’s devastating floods, needs “massive investment” from the international community, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said today during an international conference.
Due to the floods of the summer of 2022, a third of the country was under water, 1,700 people lost their lives, while a total of more than 33 million were affected.
The UN and Pakistan are today calling on countries, organizations and businesses to increase their support, especially financial, to the country’s reconstruction plans, so that it is able to cope with climate change in the long term.
“No country deserves what happened to Pakistan,” Guterres stressed at the opening of the international conference, which is being held in Geneva and which aims to raise the $16.3 billion the country needs to rebuild and to be able to deal more effectively in the future with the effects of climate change.
“We must respond to the heroic response of the people of Pakistan with our own efforts and massive investment in order to strengthen communities for the future,” noted the UN secretary-general.
The floods that hit Pakistan last year “are the biggest climate disaster in the history of the country”, underlined the Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. “The scope of the damage (…) is monumental,” he added.
The country needs $8 billion from its international partners over the next three years in order to rebuild, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said.
“Critical moment”
“The waters may have receded, but their effects remain,” complained Achim Steiner of the UN Development Program (UNDP), who described the floods as a “cataclysmic event”.
Vast areas of land remained under water for months and the floods have not receded in some areas in the southern part of the country. The damage is huge.
According to Unicef, up to four million children still live near polluted and stagnant water.
Millions of people remain displaced, far from their homes, and those who have managed to return have often found their homes damaged or destroyed and fields full of mud, impossible to cultivate.
Food prices have soared and the number of food insecure Pakistanis has doubled to 14.6 million, according to the UN.
The World Bank estimates that up to 9 million more people could be pushed into poverty by the disaster.
“This conference is the beginning of a process that will last many years,” underlined last week Pakistan’s ambassador to the UN, Khalil Hashmi.
Islamabad and the UN have explained that today’s conference is not a traditional donor conference because, among other things, Pakistan wants to create a long-term international partnership centered on rebuilding and improving its resilience to climate change.
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