Floods in Pakistan Expose Poverty and Malnutrition
04/05/2011
The [floods in Pakistan drew] a significant emergency and recovery response on the part of numerous International NGOs
Last summer's massive floods swept through and destroyed lives, houses, crop lands and road infrastructure, causing enormous suffering and damages across an area the size of Italy. The disaster has drawn a significant emergency and recovery response on the part of numerous International NGOs, taking them to often remote areas where any kind of aid had been sparse for many years.
What Concern Worldwide and its fellow aid organizations discovered - aside, of course, from communities' grave needs in the wake of the floods - were chronic conditions of poverty, malnutrition, poor health, as well as - especially in Sindh Province - inequitable conditions for tenant farmers and laborers. Most of the flood affected areas where we are working today were already very poor and vulnerable before the floods, and ranked low on the UN Human Development Index.
Tenant farmers work very hard for very little and are trapped in an archaic feudal system. The landlords benefit much more from the land than their tenants. Seasonal tenants are paid only a third of the profit gained from the harvest, and they have no rights or formal relationship with the landowner - who is often an absentee landlord - once the harvest is over. Attempts have been made at land reform on several occasions since the foundation of the state, but a lack of political will made these efforts ineffective.
There have been widespread accusations of diversion of flood water by influential figures during the 2010 floods, as reported widely in the national and international media. Pakistan's Supreme Court has constituted a judicial commission to investigate the breaching of dykes in Sindh by influential landowners to save their farms.
Children are the major victims in all this. That becomes evident when you examine malnutrition rates. Lack of proper nutrition has been a problem in Sindh for some time and the situation was exacerbated by the floods - stored food, standing crops and agricultural inputs like seed and fertilizer were destroyed in the deluge.
A UNICEF report, entitled "Children in Pakistan: Six Months After the Floods," quoting the data by the Sindh De¬partment of Health, indicates malnutrition at or beyond emergency threshold levels, with a Global Acute Mal¬nutrition (GAM) rate of 23.1% in Northern Sindh and 21.2% in Southern Sindh. The WHO gives 15% as the emergen¬cy threshold level to trigger a humanitarian response. The same report referring to records from Northern Sindh has revealed a Se¬vere Acute Malnutrition (SAM) rate of 6.1%. These figures are on a par with what NGOs have been confronted with during the most severe nutrition crisis in Africa.
I am cautiously optimistic that the spotlight put upon the country's very poorest people will have long-term beneficial effects. But the task at hand is staggering.
Mubashir Ahmed is Assistant Country Director for Concern Worldwide in Pakistan.
One of the major obstacles to sustainable development in Pakistan has consistently been the absence of definitive land reforms that will allow the poorest of the poor- the landless peasants and tenant farmers - to escape out of the spiral of abject poverty.
Thus far, any attempts at land reforms have been weak and mostly cosmetic, with negligible impact on the lives of the rural poor. Until these reforms are built into the very fabric of social development policy on a national level, backed by sincere political will, there is little chance for any major improvements to the poverty levels of these marginalized communities.
— Kiran on 2011-04-06
It is unfortunate that calamities come together and mostly it is the poor who suffer the most. It also goes for the associated poor living conditions which expose them to many infections - food, water borne and vector borne diseases. Malnourishment could be pre or post flood. Infections adds salt to the bleeding wounds of the calamity.
— Dr. C. Nagaraj on 2011-04-08