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Loading...Top 5 Shocking Facts About The Pakistan Floods
Devastating floods have been ravaging Pakistan for over a month, but despite widespread suffering, the media coverage of this disaster has been casual at best.
Nearly 20 million Pakistanis have been displaced from their homes and put at risk for water born disease, yet the American media seems to have marginalized the issue, impeding the flow of supplies and donations needed to provide aid.
Some believe that “the West and Europe have adopted Islamaphobia, which obviously has clouded humanitarian concerns” (Huffington Post).
You don’t have to be a political analyst to see that more social and political unrest isn’t what this region needs. People are suffering, and as fellow humans and activists, it is our duty to do what we can.
Here are 5 things you may not have known about the Pakistan floods. Become informed, and then take action!
1. The United Nations has rated the floods in Pakistan as the greatest humanitarian crisis in recent history. Already, more people have been affected in Pakistan than the 2004 South-East Asian tsunami and the recent earthquakes in Kasmir and Haiti combined.
2. The Pakistan flood may be linked to the fires in Russia. Although the unfolding disasters seem far apart, they are actually being driven by the same meta weather system, according to a report from National Geographic. Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the Boulder, Colorado-based National Center for Atmospheric Research, told the organization, “That’s because the monsoon – a seasonal wind system that brings rain and floods to Pakistan and much of the rest of Asia in summer – also drives the circulation of air as far away as Europe.”
3. Only a fraction of the people needing aid have been contacted by emergency crews. In the 10 days following the initial flood waves, the government managed to distribute only 10,000 food packs, which contained a box of dried milk, and a few bottles of water and Pepsi. These packages were meant to “feed” 80,000 people, leaving 1,720,000 without any type of aid.
4. The Pakistan flood may be linked to global warming. In an unprecedented move, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has come forward to formally blamed the flooding in Pakistan on “global warming,” angering some denialists (CNSNews.com). “Indeed, the Islamic world is paying a heavy price resulting from the negative repercussions of climate change,” said OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu at an emergency meeting in Saudi Arabia.
5. The destruction is enormous, and preys on the weak. Reports indicate 62,000 square miles of land have been affected — about one-fifth of the entire country. Of the 15 million people seriously affected, about 50 percent are children.
Take Action!
Care2′s Kristina Chew recently provided suggestions on how to take action to help those suffering in Pakistan:
The New York Times’s Lede blog has a list of organizations that are working to provide disaster relief to Pakistan. If you’ve any doubts about how relief funds are being used, see the Oxfam website, which provides answers to questions such as ‘Will providing more aid reduce support for the Taliban?’ and ‘How do I know my donation will not be lost to corruption or diverted to an extremist organization in Pakistan?’
Care2 Coverage of Pakistan Floods:
Why is Pakistan Being Left Behind?
Why Aren’t We Doing More For Flood-Ravaged Pakistan?
Millions Of Pakistanis Homeless Due To Widespread Floods
Like this story? Connect with Beth on Twitter or StumbleUpon!
Read more: climate change, floods, global warming, homeless, media, natural disaster, pakistan, russian fires, sustaintmc, united nations
Image Credit: Flickr - United Nations Development Programme
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may
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Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.
Recent Comments from Causes
Hélas, encore des victimes de l' homme. Bonne et longue vie à ces tortues.
One bad apple ruins the rest, I have friends in Canada that are trying very hard to end all of the cruelty,…
It is very difficult to find ME at a LOSS of words but a story like this and the absolute idiocy of the…
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173 comments
+ add your ownAnother bit of news of which I would have never heard had it not been for Care2. I haven't heard about this at all.
Thank you for the information
so sad! =(
the reallity of global warming and its effect on the worl speak by itself!
Thanks for the information
Devastating and needs to be a priority for agencies to give aid.
Sadly the government's anti-peace policies are keeping the rest of the world from being generous with the poor citizens of this country. It's not fair, but it is understandable.
Just yesterday I read that the Pakistan government denied fiancial aid from India due to their "ancient" animosity and requested that it has to go to the UN and then they will acccept it.
Shame on the government not to think of the well-being of their people but rather their own baggage.
[A tragedy of the world’s poor has been that] the West spent $2.3 trillion on foreign aid over the last five decades and still had not managed to get twelve-cent medicines to children to prevent half of all malaria deaths. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get four-dollar bed nets to poor families. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get three dollars to each new mother to prevent five million child deaths.
… It is heart-breaking that global society has evolved a highly efficient way to get entertainment to rich adults and children, while it can’t get twelve-cent medicing to dying poor children.
— William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden; Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest have Done So Much Ill and so Little Good, (Penguin
See http://www.globalissues.org/article/35/foreign-aid-development-assistance#AidisActuallyHamperingDevelopment
I agree to with the person who mentioned the babies HALF the people needing assisitance are children, educate to not have children when starving and living in disaster zones, better choices and a way to have birth control would really help!
Sad & Horrible.
Thank you for keeping the disaster in sight.
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