Pakistan Floods: Are "Homeland" Cards Actually Helping People Get Home?

Imagine you're a peasant farmer in rural Pakistan and massive floods have destroyed your modest mud-brick home, devastated your crops, and carried away all of your possessions. If you were lucky, you spent a few months in a camp where aid agencies provided a place to sleep and basic meals. Now you've returned home — perhaps with a tent and some blankets, but maybe not — and you're trying to find a way to feed your family and rebuild your life.

A rapid infusion of cash right now could be very helpful. Then you could prioritize and get the things you most need: maybe some seeds, food, blankets, perhaps some medicine.

This is the basic idea behind the prepaid debit cards, called Watan ("homeland" in Urdu) cards, issued by the Pakistan government to people living in flood-affected areas. This system is intended to deliver much-needed support directly to flood survivors, ensuring speed and transparency. The cards initially are charged with 20,000 Pakistani rupees (about US$230). Additional installments will be made, though it's unclear when and how much.

Because your residency is registered in the government's database, you're eligible for a Watan card. You get this card, but no one explains the system to you. Like the majority of people you know, you've never learned to read, and you probably don't have a bank account. You don't need an account to use your card, but it means you've never used an ATM — and those require reading skills. Furthermore, ATMs are few and far between in rural Pakistan — you'll have to go to a large town to find one, and then you'll have to ask someone to help you. Hopefully, you'll find a person who'll explain the Watan card to you, help you withdraw the full amount, and then tell you to keep your card for when the next installment is made.

But perhaps you'll come up against the kind of thing we heard stories about on our recent assessment visit to Pakistan: people helping survivors withdraw cash for a fee, people buying cards from uninformed survivors, people keeping survivors' "used" cards, and landowners demanding cards or cash from tenant farmers.

Or maybe you're a survivor of the floods, but you're originally from somewhere else and you never registered your new residency with the government. In this case, you're likely out of luck. The process for establishing your residency after the fact is unclear and arduous at best. Or perhaps your husband was registered — you were not — and he has since passed away. You, also, are likely out of luck. And if you're an Afghan refugee who's home in Pakistan was destroyed in the floods? Sorry, you were never able to get on the list in the first place.

The Pakistan government is aware of the problems with the Watan cards, and surely some officials are trying to overcome the enormous system challenges. No doubt, for some people, Watan cards are making a critical difference. But for many, at best, they're frustrating and confusing, and at worst, they're actually pushing people further away from recovery. UUSC is working with local organizations in Pakistan to help those survivors who are at risk of being pushed further down the ladder of recovery because of gender, class/caste, religion, nationality, and geography. Help us help by supporting our Pakistan flood relief efforts.

UUSC's Rights in Humanitarian Crises team — Martha Thompson and Gretchen Alther — visited flood-affected areas of Pakistan in December. Check back for forthcoming blog posts and updates.