The InterDependent

Up to 166,000 Pakistanis remain without homes and needy as a result of last summer’s epic floods, which affected 20 million people, killed 1,700, destroyed 1.7 million houses and damaged 5.4 million acres of arable land in the country. An estimated 3.2 million people are still living in camps that sprouted spontaneously or were organized by UN agencies.

More than six months after the flood, the UN refugee agency said that 128,000 flood victims are living in temporary shelters across 188 locations in Sindh Province in the south; 25,000 in 39 camps in Baluchistan in the southwest; and more than 13,000 in 16 camps in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly called the Northwest Frontier province and home to the conflict-ridden Swat Valley). The flash floods struck northern Pakistan at the start of the monsoons in July and spread south, obliterating Indus River Valley villages and damaging residences along the way. In Sindh, some areas are still mired in water, forcing the farmers and other rural dwellers to spend the winter in camps, as people up north are doing, often residing in tents without heat.

In eastern Baluchistan, towns are gradually returning to normal. Shops and markets have reopened and villagers have started rebuilding homes in the worst-hit districts of Jaffarabad and Naseerabad, where thousands of mud houses perished. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees is helping to build 16,000 of the 26,000 temporary shelters going up in the region.

Since last summer, the agency has provided emergency shelter to two million people and offered winter clothes, blankets and plastic sheeting for those inside and outside the camps. Most of the people in the camps have no money to rebuild their homes and can’t work, or they have no cash to return to their villages.

Given the tremendous scale of the floods, the agency said that the assistance seemed comparatively small in comparison with other natural catastrophes around the world. The UN refugee agency has also built semipermanent one-room shelters for 7,000 families and will be working on more than 95,000 shelters to house 665,000 people.

N. James/UNHCR

A view last summer of part of the Sibi District in Baluchistan, Pakistan, which was hard hit by the country's worst floods in decades.

Recently, the agency inaugurated a new project in the Swat Valley, the Micro Hydel Power Plant, which can produce electricity for more than 80 households in the remote village of Mian Jai Wajoor Bandai. The agency, through its main partner, Sarhad Rural Support program, has begun 12 community-based energy projects totaling $350,000, with in-kind contributions of labor and material from the communities.

The plant is one of the agency’s 16 Quick Impact Projects initiatives set up for flood-hit areas to benefit about three million people.

In addition, the American Geophysical Union reported in January that data from computer models at a weather forecasting center in Europe had indicated the onset of the heavy rains in Pakistan before the flood occurred, and that this information could have been used to give the country 10 days' warning about the rains. But the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting did not reach Pakistan because of a lack of cooperation between the center and the country, the American Geophysical Union, a Washington nonprofit group, said in a press release on Jan. 31.

The UN also reported that in Afghanistan, 200,000 new homes have been built since 2002 for returning refugees and internally displaced people in a $250 million program that has benefited 1.4 million Afghans. The refugees and others return because they think they will be better off than in Pakistan and Iran, where most of them have been living for decades, said Babar Baloch, a press officer in Geneva for the UN refugee agency. The houses are generally made of mud bricks and constructed by the community for the returnees, who tend to be poor families headed by women. The two-room houses have a latrine and sometimes a kitchen, Baloch added.

Up to 4.5 million people have returned to the country since 2002 despite the increasing violence in Afghanistan. In 2010, the UN helped more than 17,000 families with shelter as they resettle mostly in rural areas, where services are minimal, adding to strains on the country’s weak if nonexistent institutions. As a result of the continuing precarious conditions, the UN agency said it would keep the housing program going this year to help those moving back.