UUSC partners in southern Pakistan are responding to the current monsoon floods [PDF] that are devastating hundreds of communities — the same communities ravaged by last year's massive flooding. To date, over two million people have been affected.

Our partner the Participatory Village Development Program (PVDP) tells us that the flooding has hit landless farmers the hardest. These farmers are sharecroppers and livestock herders for large landowners. These farmers have no resources or assets to sustain them in times of crisis — like now. Where PVDP works, many of the affected communities are members of the low-caste Hindu community and are regularly discriminated against both socially and economically.

According to our partner, these communities "ordinarily live hand-to-mouth. Today, most of their homes have been submerged by water and families are forced to sit on the roadsides or in schools without food, water, or bathrooms. They must drink the dirty rainwater, which is causing many children to fall ill. The floodwaters are attracting many mosquitoes, which increase the risk of disease."

PVDP has put together an emergency response team that includes 20 staff members and 100 volunteers, along with 4-wheel-drive vehicles that can help move much needed aid. The team is preparing lists of affected people to ensure that people get the aid they need — regardless of their caste.

Consider supporting UUSC's work with Pakistan partners who have been responding to last year's massive floods and are now helping communities minimize the devastation of this year's flooding. Find out more about our work in Pakistan. 

One year ago, massive monsoon flooding inundated Pakistan. Today, people are still trying to recover. We've been working to ensure that this recovery is free from exploitation — especially for people traditionally relegated to the margins of society and progress.

Through one of our partners, Doaba Foundation, we are supporting the recovery of a community of 30 flood-affected, seminomadic families. This includes assisting them in becoming self-reliant and helping them access their rights so that they can live with dignity and prosperity.

Doaba is facilitating the acquisition of permanent land for the entire community and building environmentally appropriate, flood-resilient, raised-mud homes (see photo).

There are many aspects of Doaba's work that I find really exciting. Just two of those:  

1. Doaba is working with the communities (both the target community as well as the surrounding communities) to advocate with local and district governments to provide the land for this community. Actually getting the land may be a long shot, but this is the first time such a community-led effort has been made. Already, the request for land has been passed up through a few layers of government. If this effort is successful, it will serve as a model for other communities. (If it's not successful, Doaba and its partner communities will find other ways to acquire the needed land.)


2. The land and the homes will be jointly registered in both husbands' and wives' names. When we first raised this question, Doaba spoke with community members and they agreed joint ownership, which does not always happen in Pakistan, was important. This is a good example of impact — of the impact our questions can have on partners and communities as well as the impact that our disaster-response work can have on long-term transformation.

It took mere hours to destroy the homes of nearly 22,200 people. When monsoon floodwaters ripped through the Azakhel refugee camp in northwest Pakistan this past August, 6,000 Afghan refugee families were made instantly homeless. With no place to go and hearing that the camp would not be rebuilt, survivors began to displace to other camps, made the heart-wrenching decision to return to Afghanistan, or sought out options in cities and towns throughout Pakistan.

For a group of 74 families, the decision to try to settle in the town of Attock — a couple hours west on the Grand Trunk Road — was motivated by the fact that they knew people there. These families are Turkmen Afghans, and many Turkmen already live in Attock town. Attock is also the home of one of UUSC's partner organizations, Barakat, which helps Afghan refugee families get quality education.

I visited the flood-affected Afghan refugees in Attock in December. I went to Barakat schools and met the students. I spoke with their fathers, and then with their mothers. I visited their rented homes, including the home of the Murad family, which left the devastated Azakhel camp in the aftermath of the flooding.

Mr. Murad, in his late 30s and the father of seven children — one in the womb — fled to Attock with his wife, their children, and his elderly father. Life is bittersweet for Mr. Murad and his family right now. On the one hand, he is among a larger community that is doing what it can to look after his welfare. His Turkmen Afghan neighbors have helped his family find a small place to rent for about $30 a month and work as a subcontracted carpet weaver. Barakat has given Mr. Murad's family, and all of the other 74 flood-displaced families, two small disbursals of cash to help meet their daily housing, food, and health-care needs. Barakat has encouraged the newcomers to send their children to Barakat schools, free of charge.

On the other hand, their recovery is arduous. Back in the Azakhel camp, all of the Murad children attended school. Mr. Murad worked as a carpenter, and that was enough to support his family. But in Attock, making ends meet means that the Murad kids, along with Mrs. Murad, have to stay home to help weave carpets. Mr. Murad goes out in search of daily labor jobs. If he's lucky, he'll earn about $2.40 a day, but a recent injury to his hand has kept him home of late. The Murads are worried about their situation. They want their kids to attend school, and Mr. Murad's father's health is failing.

The Murads' situation — and others like it — reinforces the importance of the partnership that UUSC and Barakat have formed to help flood-affected Afghan refugee families in Attock reestablish their livelihoods and become proprietors of their own businesses. With support for capital investments, the newly arrived families from Azakhel camp will be able to use their existing expertise to reestablish their lives in Attock and send their kids back to school.

Learn more about UUSC's response to the devastating monsoon flooding in Pakistan.

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.

As we take time to contemplate the state of the world this Human Rights Day, I sat down with Martha Thompson, manager of UUSC's Rights in Humanitarian Crises Program, to hear about the latest on our work around the world with marginalized communities in recovery from war and natural disasters.

Uganda

UUSC staff were just in northern Uganda as part of the Witness to a Return Home JustJourney, during which participants learned about the inspiring work that has — after just two years of support — helped more than 12,000 Acholi resettle 29 villages in 2 parishes. And those 29 villages are serving as magnets, drawing other displaced people back. After up to 20 years living in camps during the war with the Lord's Resistance Army, there is much healing and rebuilding involved in returning home. As the Acholi people reestablish their lives, they are not only rebuilding their homes and land but also reweaving their culture and reintegrating former child soldiers into villages to create cohesive communities.

Gaza

UUSC has pioneered work with Architecture for Humanity and the American Friends Service Committee to develop low-cost appropriate ways to repair houses in Gaza that were damaged during Operation Cast Lead, a three-week military conflict in late 2008 and early 2009. It's not just about fixing structural damage, though, it's about restoring human dignity. With our partners, we've finalized a report that catalogs the damages and outlines repair strategies. And now we're sharing it with other organizations in the shelter cluster in Gaza who have funds to act on the information.

Haiti

As we approach the one-year commemoration of the earthquake in Haiti, we've used approximately 40 percent of our Haiti Relief Fund to support survivors in myriad ways. One of the projects we're excited to see succeeding is the work with the Trauma Resource Institute of training a corps of 80 Haitian grassroots community organizers who will work as trauma resilience counselors. Next year, 20 of those 80 will become trainers themselves. We're also supporting and increasing safety for unaccompanied children in camps, since they're at high risk for sexual exploitation and child slavery. And through KOFAVIV, we're working against gender-based violence in the camps as well — they're in the process of training 100 camp activists on the issue.

Darfur

Our work in Darfur has spread to North Darfur, where we're partnering with UNIFEM to train police in northern Darfur and work with the U.N. gender officers the way that we did in South Darfur. While Darfur is too often left out of mainstream news coverage, we're still weaving a web of protection for women and girls in camps for internally displaced persons.

Pakistan

As UUSC staff takes off for an assessment visit to Pakistan, we're continuing to work with our partners there, Bedari and Barakat. With Bedari, we're setting up women's centers for people that are displaced within their villages. In the areas we're working in, mainly in the southern provinces of Punjab and Sindh, many displaced people are in debt slavery. Young girls are sometimes used as assets in paying off debts and denied any rights whatsoever — and at a time like this, when people's livelihoods have been destroyed, there will be a likely rise in this practice. So we're focused on looking at how we can protect women and girls from this and how we can support people rebuilding their livelihoods.

Talking to Gretchen Alther, a senior associate for UUSC's Rights in Humanitarian Crises Program, the other day, I got an updated sense of what's going on in Pakistan and how partner work is progressing.

In northern Pakistan, people have mostly returned to their land, though their homes and lands are largely destroyed. In the south, large areas of farmland are still flooded and many people are still living in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs). Throughout the country, more than 1 million IDPs are living in almost 5,000 different sites. Because of flooded routes and washed-out bridges, difficulties in distributing aid continue — which makes it that much more important for us to be working hand in hand with local organizations.

In terms of international aid, the World Food Program pipeline is threatened with interruptions, which would result in food shortages and ration cuts. The United Nations has made its biggest appeal yet — $2 billion — but it remains drastically underfunded at only 45 percent.

The circumstances are overwhelming and dispiriting, but our partners are carrying out exciting and essential work that gives us hope. We've heard from Lyla Hardesty of Barakat that their livelihoods project has started, beginning with a survey of market carpet weavers to determine needs and ways to offer support, while they also work on getting children, especially girls, into school. At the same time, Bedari is working on ensuring that women and children in camps get access to services and information. They are also supporting and empowering the voicing of women's concerns in recovery, both in district-level and regional assemblies.

With the generous donations of members and supporters to the UUSC-UUA Joint Pakistan Flood Relief Fund, we're looking to expand our work into the hard-hit and underserved areas of Sindh, a province in southern Pakistan. And in early December, Gretchen and Martha Thompson, manager of the Rights in Humanitarian Crises Program, will be traveling to Pakistan for an assessment visit. In addition to offering technical assistance to our partners there, it will be a chance for UUSC to learn firsthand the situation on the ground and find out how best to stand in solidarity with our partners and the flood-affected people of Pakistan.

I had the pleasure of volunteering with many others during a recent interfaith alternative gift fair in Falmouth, Mass. Originally started by two members of the UU Fellowship of Falmouth, the event now has a steering committee with members from five denominations in the area. This particular event hosted 21 different projects, exhibited at tables that fair attendees visited to learn about the work of the organization and to choose to "buy" an alternative gift. They received a certificate announcing the gift and a card to use to send the certificate.

UUSC featured our Pakistan Flood Relief project, offering gift levels of $6 to provide free medical care for a woman or child; $20 to enable 20 women to receive free trauma counseling and help making her concerns heard by the humanitarian community; or $47 to help reunite a child with his or her family.

The positive and genuinely thoughtful energy in the room was inspiring. People at the tables talked with one another, learning about what other human-rights efforts were represented. The organizers gathered a diverse group of local and global projects by various organizations. Seated next to me was a project to assist displaced persons in Zimbabwe, sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee. Around the room were organizations that supported local work to prevent hunger, education efforts in Vietnam, and health-care accessibility in western Africa — and UUSC's fair-trade partner Equal Exchange was there, too, advocating for the Coffee Project.

Read more about the event in a recent Cape Cod Times article. I highly encourage other UUs to consider adding alternative gifts to their annual holiday fairs or to gather with other faith organizations to host a stand-alone event like this one! In its fourth year, it has increased in size and volume of donations every year. If you are part of a group that is already doing this, please share your stories with us! The need is everywhere — and apparently, the desire and will to advance human rights is, too! As always, UUSC provides materials and support to help in these efforts. 

There have been two mega natural disasters in 2010: the earthquake in Haiti and the floods in Pakistan. Because of the generosity of our members, UUSC is responding to both. So is the global community. But there has been a marked difference in the level of support to Haiti and Pakistan.

Worldwide, donations per affected Haitian reached an average of $157 two weeks after the U.N. appeal, compared with $15 per affected Pakistani. That's 10 times as much raised per survivor in Haiti than in Pakistan!

Why? Why do some disasters attract more support than others?

This is the question Elizabeth Ferris of the Brookings Institution explores in a report comparing Haiti and Pakistan. She begins by reviewing the scale of the two disasters. More people have been directly affected by the disaster in Pakistan than in Haiti: 20 million compared to 3 million. But a greater percentage of the overall population has been affected in Haiti than in Pakistan: 30 percent in Haiti compared to 12 percent in Pakistan.

Ferris also compares Haiti and Pakistan economically. While both countries are poor, Haiti is poorer; Haiti's gross domestic product (GDP) per person is about $733, while Pakistan's is $1,017. The economic damage from the disaster in Haiti represent a smaller number, but a far higher percentage of its GDP (119 percent of Haiti's GDP compared to the still very significant 5.8 percent for Pakistan).

Regardless of the statistics, humanitarian principles affirm that aid should be extended on the basis of need alone. So, why the significant difference in support?

The most common explanations, according to Ferris (and as a worker in this field, I would agree), include that there was more media focused on the crisis in Haiti than in Pakistan. Earthquakes are instantaneously dramatic — creating a sense of immediate urgency that works well in popular media, while floods (as experienced in Pakistan) happen over a longer time period. So people saw and heard more about Haiti. There was also far more death and injury in Haiti than Pakistan, and causalities prompt greater reactions. Finally, the proximity of the United States to Haiti, the large Haitian diaspora in the United States, and the long history of humanitarian and development work in Haiti are other factors that encouraged greater support.

But Ferris also questions whether there are other factors at play. Were global contributions to Pakistan lower because we might be concerned with corruption? (Even though Haiti ranks lower than Pakistan on corruption perceptions indices.) Or might we (of the major donor countries) be linking Pakistan to Islamic extremism? Are we thinking that Pakistan is a corrupt country that harbors terrorists? And if so, does that mean we might think some people need (or deserve) international aid more than others? Or do we perhaps think that Haiti is our neighbor, and other countries should focus on Pakistan? Or did the media's inclusion of stories about suicide bombings in the coverage of the Pakistan floods somehow influence our donations?

Ferris poses interesting questions. Within the report and the text of a subsequent speech on the same topic, she asks even more — questioning the role of politics, whether some kinds of assistance (or its delivery) are more harmful than helpful, and what role human rights and ethics play in the response to natural disasters.

Why do you think there has been such a disparity in response to these two disasters? We'd love to hear from you!