Sindh faces Chad-like hunger, says Unicef

Source: Dawn

Date: January 27, 2011

ISLAMABAD, Jan 26: The Sindh province, hit hard by last year`s floods, is suffering levels of malnutrition almost as critical as Chad and Niger, with hundreds of thousands of children at risk, Unicef said on Wednesday.

A survey conducted by the provincial government and the UN Children`s Fund revealed malnutrition rates of 23.1 per cent in northern Sindh and 21.2 per cent in the south.

Those rates are above the 15 per cent emergency threshold set by the World Health Organization and are on a par with some of the poorest parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

Northern Sindh also had a 6.1 per cent `severe acute` malnutrition rate and southern Sindh had 2.9 per cent, both far above the WHO thresholds. “We are looking at hundreds of thousands of children at risk,” Unicef chief of communication Kristen Elsby said.

A full report would be released on Friday by the Sindh government, she said, along with the province`s response plan.

Ms Elsby said it was unclear if the floods had caused a spike in malnutrition, but that it had revealed the extent of the problem because babies and mothers were being screened for the first time.

In Sindh and Balochistan, some 600,000 people are still living in camps, according to the World Food Programme.—Reuters

Link: http://www.dawn.com/2011/01/27/sindh-faces-chad-like-hunger-says-unicef.html

 

Millions of flood-hit still struggle for food

Source: Dawn

Date: January 27, 2011

ISLAMABAD, Jan 26: Six months after devastating floods hit Pakistan, millions of people are still in dire need of essential items and the crisis, which is far from over, could get worse, an Oxfam report says.

The report, `Six months into the floods`, said that although the aid effort had reached millions, it had struggled to match the immense scale of human need.

"Six months on millions of people are still facing flood water, shivering in temporary shelters and struggling to find food," the report said.

Oxfam said it was currently helping nearly 1.9 million people, "one of our biggest programmes worldwide â€" but this is dwarfed by the number of people who are in need," said Neva Khan, the head of Oxfam in Pakistan.

The aid community has done a tremendous job but given the scale of this disaster relief agencies have only scratched the surface of human need, it said.

Oxfam said although Pakistan`s floods were the biggest emergency of recent times with more than 18 million people affected, the funding for the response had been woefully slow.

The UN appeal for $2 billion to rebuild Pakistan remains only 56 per cent funded.

Link: http://www.dawn.com/2011/01/27/millions-of-flood-hit-still-struggle-for-food.html

Year in focus: 2010 characterised by rights abuses

Source: Express Tribune

Date: January 26, 2011

The Taliban and other religious extremists in Pakistan increased their deadly attacks against civilians and public spaces during 2010, while the government response was marred by serioushuman rights violations, Human Rights Watch said in its World Report 2011 on Monday.

The 649-page report – Human Rights Watch’s 21st annual review of human rights practices around the globe – summarizes major human rights trends in more than 90 states and territories worldwide. Suicide bombings, armed attacks, and killings by the Taliban, al Qaeda, and their affiliates targeted nearly every sector of the society, including religious minorities and journalists, resulting in hundreds of deaths, the report said.

The country’s largest cities bore the brunt of these attacks. Two attacks in late May 2010 against the Ahmadiyya community in Lahore killed nearly 100 people. On July 1, a suicide bombing at Data Darbar killed 40 people. Militant attacks targeting civilians in conflict areas amounted to war crimes, HRW said.

“The government needs to use all lawful means to hold those responsible to account,” said Ali Dayan Hasan, senior South Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch.

The government’s response to militant attacks instead has routinely violated basic rights, Human Rights Watch said. Thousands of Taliban suspects have been held in unlawful military detention without charge, many of them in two military facilities in Swat, one in the Khyber agency of the tribal areas, and at least one more in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

While the US remained Pakistan’s most significant ally and was the largest donor to the flood relief effort, Human Rights Watch documented several instances in 2010 in which US aid to Pakistan appeared to contravene the US Leahy Law. The law requires the US state department to certify that no military unit receiving US aid is involved in gross human rights abuses and, when such abuses are found, to investigate them thoroughly and properly.

Persecution and discrimination under cover of law against religious minorities and other vulnerable groups remained serious problems, Human Rights Watch said.

Aerial drone strikes by the US also escalated in 2010.

Pakistan’s media remained vocal critics of the government and experienced less interference from the elected government than in previous years, the report said. However, fearful of retaliation, the media rarely reported on human rights abuses by the military in counterterrorism operations, it added.

For more details: http://tribune.com.pk/story/109168/year-in-focus-2010-characterised-by-rights-abuses/

2010 'one of worst' years for natural disasters: UN

Source: Daily Times

Date: January 25, 2011

* Disasters left 297,000 people dead 

* Economic cost of 373 major disasters reached $109 billion 

GENEVA: 2010 was one of the worst years on record for natural disasters over the past two decades, leaving nearly 297,000 people dead, research for the United Nations showed on Monday. 

The devastating earthquake in Haiti a year ago accounted for about two thirds of the toll, killing more than 222,500 people, according to the Belgium-based Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED).

The CRED found that the summer heat wave in Russia was the second deadliest disaster of the year, leaving 55,736 people dead according to figures it compiled from insurers and media reports of official sources.

The year was “one of the worst in decades in terms of the number of people killed and in terms of economic losses,” Margareta Wahlstroem, UN special representative for disaster risk reduction, told journalists. “These figures are bad, but could be seen as benign in years to come,”

she said, pointing to the impact of unplanned growth of urban areas, environmental degradation and climate change.

The economic cost of the 373 major disasters recorded in 2010 reached $109 billion, headed by an estimated $30 billion in damage caused by the powerful earthquake that struck Chile in February. The earthquake unleashed a tsunami that swept away villages and claimed most of the 521 dead.

Summer floods and landslides in China caused an estimated $18 billion in damage, while floods in Pakistan cost $9.5 billion, according to the CRED’s annual study.

For more details: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2011\01\25\story_25-1-2011_pg7_4

 

Food shortages: Creating a crisis to force global food control

Source Pak Alert Press

Date: January 24, 2011

A shortage of food is being intentionally staged around the world.  Apparently, if we resist the theft and seizure of food production and supply by bio-pirates and facilitated by government puppets, we will be intentionally starved into submission.  Threats of the food shortage are constantly launched into “lame stream media” as a warning to the rest of us that we had better comply or face the fate of those poorer nations where millions are suffering from famine or death from lack of food.

Also see: Doomsday Seed Vault: Bill Gates, Rockefeller and the GMO giants know something we don’t

Somehow this scenario is in conflict with the PR propaganda of bio-pirates who claim their contaminated, harmful, genetically modified creations are the answer to the worlds food needs.

Claiming their Frankenfoods can somehow alleviate famine and hunger, these predators have bought and paid their way through one government after another as agricultural land is stolen, farmers displaced, and local food production is eradicated in favor of global corporate food control.

The problem is this: even with all the gmo seeds and crops, now comprising an estimated 70% of global production, and even with the constant tampering with animal dna and cloning, more of the world’s population is now suffering from a shortage of food or maybe a better description would be suffering from the withholding of food.

So where is this benefit from handing global food control over to corporate profiteers? It seems the only benefit is monetary and that is enjoyed only by corporations and governments who stuff their pockets while millions go hungry.

Looking at the data, it appears that gmo, dna tampering and cloning have decreased the global food supply to such an extent that the entire globe is now facing a food shortage.

This has to be so…..how else could we be facing a global food crisis when bio-pirates have been allowed such latitude and preferential treatment by governments’ worldwide, while promising they could end world hunger?

Where is all this abundance of food claimed by these multi-national pirate corporations that would somehow magically and mysteriously appear if only they were allowed to control all the processes?  It appears evident that all the promises of increased food production from unnatural processes and unnecessary tampering with seeds, animals, poultry and even fish has no basis in fact.  In fact, the only plausible reason that makes any sense as to why any of this has been allowed is profit and control.  What is the use of producing 20% more corn if the nutritional value is less than half of traditional corn crops?  Food isn’t just about bulk or quantity, it has to be nutritious enough to sustain us.

Factory farming, courtesy of subsidies and protection by USDA/FDA and preferential legislation by those wonderful folks in the District of Criminals, have created an environmental disaster not only for the animals but for land and water supplies.  Add the recent theft of food production and supply courtesy of “Dirty Harry” Reid with his underhanded and corrupt passage of S.510 (S2751) the fake food safety bill; a bill which had nothing to do with food safety and was instead an all out assault on family farms and ranches meant to make continuing in agriculture untenable for anyone other than multi-national corporations and a bill which will force into export much of what is produced here in the US, and the stage is set for the intentional creation of a food shortage here at home. None of this is accidental.

For more details: http://www.pakalertpress.com/2011/01/24/food-shortages-creating-a-crisis-to-force-global-food-control/

 

State of gender inequality

Source: Dawn

Date: January 20, 2011

PAKISTAN is no exception to the generally abysmal state of gender equality the world over. About 50 per cent of Pakistani girls drop out of school and our literacy rate for women is amongst the lowest in the world.

As of 2005 only 16 per cent of Pakistani women were reported as economically active while a 1996 study by the women’s division of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan showed that domestic violence takes place in about 80 per cent of Pakistani households.

Perhaps the most widely cited reason for gender inequality in the Pakistani context relates to the social custom of exalting sons above daughters. But is the difference in the treatment of sons and daughters the reason or merely a symptom of our present predicament? A meaningful answer to such a question requires an examination of not just cultural norms and traditions but the economic situation as well.

Although women’s inferior status to men exists in all strata of Pakistani society, the reasons and manifestations of the inequality differ quite substantially as we move from one socio-economic class and region to another.

While women of high-income urban families are more apt to receive higher education, they may still face restrictions in terms of labour-market opportunities.

According to the 1990-91 Pakistan Integrated Household Survey (PIHS) the female labour force participation rate in urban areas was 17 per cent.

The average literacy rate of women in Pakistan’s rural areas has been estimated at approximately one fifth of female literacy rates in urban areas, yet the PIHS indicated that the female labour force participation rate was 45 per cent in rural areas.

Looking at the economics of gender inequality, one aspect that is particularly striking is the link between gender discrimination and the traditions surrounding marriage in Pakistani society. Particularly in the case of poor families, the joy associated with the birth of a daughter is, to some extent, tempered by the substantial financial burden that it places on parents.

Despite government-issued mandates aimed at curtailing wedding expenses, nuptials remain extravagant and parents of daughters continue to face considerable costs especially due to the custom of dowry giving. The marriage of a daughter also signifies a drop in household earnings. Hence it is no surprise that poor households are loath to allocate meager resources as monetary investments in their daughters given that they are unlikely to see much return on the said investment.

For more details: http://www.dawn.com/2011/01/20/state-of-gender-inequality.html

Foreign flood aid: Pakistan waits for donors to follow through on pledges

Source: Express Tribune

Date: January 19, 2011

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has so far received only a third of the international pledges required to meet the essential needs of 20 million flood survivors, which was enough only for “partial success” of the most crucial relief phase which will be over by January, The Express Tribune has learnt.

In July 2010, the worst-ever floods of Pakistan’s history affected over one-tenth of the country’s population and caused losses estimated at $10.8 billion. But official statistics show that since then, a group of 79 bilateral and multilateral donors and philanthropist organisations have disbursed $475 million in cash and $185 million in kind. This is slightly over one-fifth of the donors’ total commitments of three billion dollars and one-third of the total needs at the ground. Immediately after the disaster, the United Nations had sought $2 billion for early relief and recovery phases. Officially, the relief phase will be over by the end of January.

However, after six months, thousands are still living in tents. According to the Damage and Needs Assessment report, Pakistan needs one billion dollars each for relief and early recovery phases.

An official of the economic affairs division (EAD) lamented that donors were not ready to give money through the government due to the tainted image of the political leadership.

“The flood and its aftermath is a forgotten story because neither are donors providing significant funds nor is the federal government doing enough as the Council of Common Interests had decided that the primary responsibility lies with provincial governments,” a member of the National Oversight Disaster Management Council (NODMC) said on condition of anonymity. The council was formed soon after the floods struck to trace the inflow of funds and monitor progress on projects after donors expressed reservations over transparency.

He said that so far, the council had held three meetings and according to the NODMC “nothing significant is happening on the grounds as foreign funds have been diverted toward the Watan Card scheme”.

However, Chairperson of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) Lt-Gen (retd) Nadeem Ahmed said that only 152,000 people are living in tents. “Ninety-five per cent of the affected population has returned home,” Ahmed said.

According to the NDMA, the government has met two of four targets. “The government did well in delivering food and providing health care. However, it could not provide shelter to all and extend water and sanitation services,” he said.

Ahmed said that against the UN’s appeal, Pakistan has received firm commitments which are approximately 56 per cent of the appeal.

For more details: http://tribune.com.pk/story/105945/foreign-flood-aid-pakistan-waits-for-donors-to-follow-through-on-pledges/