Emergency Appeal in Pakistan for Flood Victims

Emergency Appeal in Pakistan for Flood Victims

“Pakistan is awash in suffering. The Pakistani people are facing a monsoon on steroids — the relentless impact of epochal levels of rain and flooding,”

Guterres described the recent floods, which have inundated nearly half of Pakistan, as a “climate catastrophe,” noting that South Asia is one of the world’s “climate crisis hotspots.”

People living in these hotspots are 15 times more likely to die as a consequence of the changing climate, he warned.

The “super floods” have been described as a “climate calamity” by Islamabad’s top diplomat, who fears that more rains will worsen the situation in already flooded areas.

The scale of destruction is feared to increase that of the 2010 “mega or super floods,” which submerged a fifth of the country’s land and killed over 2,000 people, he added.

Some72 districts, according to Zardari, have been declared “calamity-hit, with 33 million people affected – which is the size of a small country.

“Over 1,000 people have lost their lives and several others were grappling with the loss of livelihoods and displacement,”

“Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced and forced to spend days and nights … under a merciless sky and (a) lack of access to food, water and shelter are making life harder with each passing day,” he added.