One year after the terrible water flooding which hit the whole country, from North to South, leaving over 8 million affected people, Pakistan faces once again massive floods which have claimed so far 226 lives, affecting 5.3 million people, among which many had already lost everything in the summer 2010 catastrophe. Humanitarian needs are once more unprecedented, while monsoon rains are further deteriorating the sanitary conditions of stranded communities and complicate access of relief to these vulnerable populations.

Situation report in Sindh

Unlike floods in 2010 which hit the whole country, populations in the South are the first victims of this year’s disaster, with Sindh being the most affected province. Over 1 million homes have been damaged or destroyed, and 1.7 million acres of land flooded, threatening the health, livelihoods and living conditions of hundreds of thousands of families in Jacobabad, Kasmhore, Shikarpur and Khaipur (Northern Sindh) and in Southern Sindh, in Badin and Nirpur Khas.

Throughout these heavily affected areas, populations are awaiting immediate relief, emergency shelters, food, access to potable water, proper sanitation and hygiene, as well as access to health facilities.

ACTED’s emergency interventions

Active in Sindh Province for over a year, ACTED and other humanitarian agencies had been preparing for this crisis, scaling up their emergency capacities, working on contingency planning, piling up emergency stocks in warehouses, setting up dedicated coordination to face these expected floods. This disaster mostly affects areas in which ACTED did not previously work in. Thus ACTED teams in Sindh have been mobilized to provide emergency relief to populations impacted throughout the province, starting operations in new intervention areas.

ACTED has already distributed water purifying kits on September 15th to 1056 families in Badin district and is about to proceed to the distribution of 750 non food items and shelter kits, meant to reinforce makeshift shelters in the days to come in Khaipur district.

ACTED will implement these relief interventions with the support of the United Nations contingency stocks and in partnership with Alliance2015 associates Welthungerhilfe and People In Need, with which we have been working in consortium in the last few months to support Pakistani people.

A coordinated humanitarian intervention

Our teams are presently working on field assessments, with other humanitarian agencies in Sindh and in partnership with FAO, in order to plan the most relevant emergency interventions swiftly, prioritizing isolated communities and affected groups left with no resources.

ACTED is also deploying its REACH system dedicated to providing assessment and mapping services of humanitarian needs in emergency contexts. The data produced is to be shared with the whole humanitarian community and local operators dedicated to the emergency floods. After Kyrgyzstan in 2010, last year’s floods in Pakistan, and lately in Libya, REACH supports humanitarian coordination and planning in the immediate aftermaths of this disaster, in the framework of the shelter cluster, with the following services shared with relief agencies: satellite imagery provision and analysis, assessment facilitation, 3W mapping activities, web-based mapping and database portal.

REACH aims at enhancing aid-effectiveness by providing information gathering and management services that improve the planning, targeting and coordination capacity of aid actors, NGOs, international organizations, local operators and authorities all mobilized to respond these terrific floods.

KASHMORE [ACTED News] - Just over a year since the devastating 2010 floods in Pakistan, monsoon rains have again incurred serious flooding in Sindh. More than 1 million houses and 4.2 million acres of land have been destroyed, threatening the health and livelihoods of over 5 million people. The government of Pakistan has asked for support from humanitarian actors concerning the provision of life saving relief through shelter, food, health, water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions.

ACTED is currently undertaking assessments in Badin, Mirpur Khas, and Khaidpur, after which relief will be provided through emergency shelters and the rehabilitation of water, sanitation, and hygiene systems. The second phase of intervention will involve the provision of longer term shelters and re-establishment of agricultural activities and livelihoods in the affected areas.

Pakistan: one year on

In the situation report entitled “PAKISTAN 1 year on. A combined humanitarian commitment: what next?”, released on 26 July 2011, ACTED calls for sustainable commitment towards livelihoods recovery projects and disaster risk reduction interventions, to help the country withstand future hazards that threaten to befall it: the monsoon season has arrived and has already hit some of the 2010 affected areas.

This report also aims to present the importance of sustained efforts and effective partnerships in humanitarian responses. Specifically it outlines that needs of the Pakistani people are still high one year on from the floods and continued attention is needed to maximize prospects over the coming months and years. Click here to download the report.