PAKISTAN FLOODS UNPRECEDENTED SCALE - UNICEF (UPDATED 1439GMT)

(HN, August 20, 2010) - The area of Pakistan now under water is equivalent to that of Switzerland, Belgium and Austria combined.

"I've never seen an emergency this large," said Daniel Toole, the UNICEF Regional Director for South Asia who has 20 years emergency experience. "In terms of the scope, the scale, the number of displaced...the situation is as grim as any I've seen and it is likely to get worse."UNICEF Regional Director Dan Toole

"There are amazing expanses of water as far as the eye can see."

The UN now estimates that there are 15.4 million people affected, and nearly 7.5 million very severely affected. UN agencies say some 3.5m people are at very serious risk of water borne diseases. Toole said that at a health unit in the Punjab he had visited, of the 950 patients about 80 percent had been diagnosed with diarrhea. "The situation for health, nutrition is quite severe."

UNICEF estimates about 5,000 schools are still occupied by displaced people and nearly the same number destroyed or partially damaged. The number of health centres damaged equal about 5,000.

More than 20 days after the floods hit, Toole, who spoke to journalists by phone from the affected area, did not mix words to underline how crucial it is for donors to release funds now. "It's too little and too slow for cash."

Toole said that the joint appeal the UN initially issued - when only 3.5 to 4.5 million people were affected - is now out of date. "We now have 5 times that many affected," he said. UNICEF initially appealed for $47 million people but now needs at least $141 million to deal with the numbers of people it is trying to assist. The children's agency now has only $8 million in cash and has mobilized $7 million of its own funds. Although UNICEF has $35 million in pledges, "we cannot pay with pledges, we cannot find cash from commitments to buy sanitation supplies, water supplies, medicines and nutritional supplies. The situation is very, very difficult."

UNICEF is now providing water to 1.5 million people, but only a fraction of what is needed. "We all need to scale up, we need a long term commitment. We urgently therefore need funding - and not pledges, but actual cash in the bank."

Toole said UNICEF prefers to purchase supplies like soap and buckets locally but the scope of the disaster makes that difficult. "The Pakistani economy is wounded seriously by the disaster and local suppliers cannot possibly keep up with the demand we have. We put an SOS to all of our offices in South Asia to source supplies."

With temperatures hovering around 35C - but with the heat index in places like Sukkur about 54C - and plenty of water, Toole said "the conditions are absolutely perfect for malaria, acute watery diarrhea and cholera."

All UN agencies predict the emergency will last for quite some time to come. Aside from the homeless situation and the large probability of disease, lack of food will be a problem.

Officials in Sindh Province said this year's rice crop is gone and that farmers will likely be unable to plant rice next year.

Yesterday US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced $60 million I'm fresh emergency aid funding - bringing to $150 million committed earlier. She said the waters are not expected to recede until mid-September.

And speaking before the UN General Assembly this morning, Pakistan's Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani said an astonishing one in ten Pakistanis are now destitute.

At the same session, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon compared the floods to "a slow-motion tsunami."

He added: "At least 160,000 square kilometers of land is under water. Fifteen to 20 million people need shelter, food and emergency care. That is more than the entire population hit by the (2004) Indian Ocean tsunami, the Kashmir earthquake, Cyclone Nargis, and the earthquake in Haiti - combined."

Pakistanis are not the only ones affected by the flod waters. With 1.7 million Afghan refugees, the country has one of the world's largest refugee populations. More than 1.5 million of these are in affected provinces, dozens of Afghan refugee villages have been damaged, and several are completely destroyed, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Click here to view an exclusive photo essay on the Pakistan flood emergency by photographer Asad Zaidi

INTERVIEW: WORLD HUMANITARIAN DAY - AN AID WORKER SPEAKS OUT

HUMNEWS’ Michael Bociurkiw has been working on and off as an aid worker for UNICEF since 2001. Here are excerpts from our interview with him on World Humanitarian Day.

Credit: Katie Grusovin

I have worked mostly as a Communication Officer - or spokesperson - both in emergencies and country office settings. Lately I have taken on more work in the donor relations and programmatic areas. I’ve also worked for a brief period as global spokesperson in Geneva. The 2005 Pakistan earthquake and the 2008 Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar are the two largest emergencies I’ve worked on. In both cases, the devastation was vast and millions were displaced.

UNICEF’s mission in more than 100 countries is to create a protective environment for women and children. The organization’s ability to respond quickly in major emergencies is well-known and usually focuses on health, water and sanitation, nutrition and child protection.

Previously I was a journalist, working for major media outlets in Canada and Asia. I was led to UNICEF by pure chance immediately after 9-11, when the Afghanistan emergency was taking hold. My only experience before that with UNICEF was carrying the UNICEF Trick-or-Treat box during Halloween as a kid growing up in Canada.

Most of my work has involved informing the media and donors about UNICEF’s interventions - both during emergencies and in our day-to-day work. I love working in emergencies as the needs are great and so is the adrenalin rush. It's not uncommon to work 16-18 hour days for very long periods under very trying conditions. You can feel the difference you are making. In the first few hours and days after an emergencies strikes, it's important to get the crucial details out - as well as photos and videos - to the media and donors as quickly as possible. Transparency and accuracy are paramount in our messages. We dont work alone: we work with other UN agencies, government, NGO’s, donors and others. In emergencies - such as the ongoing floods in Pakistan - we arent able to respond fully unless donations are extended and for this we normally issue an emergency appeal. UNICEF depends entirely on voluntary donations - from ordinary people, governments and corporations. (With one-fifth of Pakistan now under water, I urge donors to respond to the appeal for immediate resources).

My longest posting was in our East Jerusalem office, where I led the communication section. We worked primarily in Gaza and the West Bank and the challenges, to say the least, were daunting. I’ve also worked in Pakistan, Tajikistan, Africa, Southeast Asia - and for the Canadian and US fundraising arms of UNICEF.

It seems that, no matter where you look on the world map, the needs of women and children are great. While there are countries where some of the indices we normally track are worsening (i.e. maternal and infant mortality, HIV AIDS, nutrition, school enrollment), for the most part we are seeing quantifiable improvements. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are due in 2015 - that’s not very far away - and there are many countries that will miss certain targets. What we are also finding is that as human development statistics are improving, there are still large groups of people - the poorest families, people in rural area, girls - that have been left behind. We often find ourselves scratching our heads, trying to find answers to vexing questions: why is it, for example, that despite free primary education, many boys and girls in rural Lesotho don't go to school?

I am often asked how I cope in emergencies - where you see some pretty gruesome scenes or where your life is often at risk. It's the encouragement and support of family and friends that keeps me going. UNICEF has no shortage of competent, well-meaning professionals and being able to work with the best in the business is a privilege.

For those of us in the communications business, I think what helps keep us going is that, as a spokesperson, you get in front of millions of viewers at a time and share with them what you are seeing, what we are doing as aid workers. We explain what people are going through, how many are affected, what the needs are and what UNICEF is doing to alleviate their suffering and keep them alive. It’s an important role to play and, in this 24-hour news cycle, you are often called upon anytime of day and night. Honesty and accuracy are crucial when you are on the air, and I think most people can tell if you are being evasive or are exaggerating. I've worked on many occasions with CNN, BCC, CBC and Al-Jazeera. CNN and CBC have been especially good to us - with air time and informed interviewers. I am glad that aid workers, journalists and technology people are now coming together to think up new, innovative ways to better cover the uncovered parts of the world - what HUM calls the "geographic gap" in news coverage.

Have I ever faced danger? Yes - I have fallen off a helicopter, been in the cross-hairs of snipers, searched at gunpoint on a Jerusalem highway, threatened by a gun-totting farmer in the Gaza Strip and sustained a bloody head injury in the desert in northern Nigeria. But my brains and limbs are still intact - and my heart is still in this!

Thankfully I havent lost any close colleagues, but we feel it deep down when anyone in the UNICEF family - or in the aid business for that matter - dies in the line of duty. I think about my compatriot and colleague,Chris Klein-Beekman died at the age of 32 in the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad. Credit: UNICEFChristopher Klein-Beekman, who at 32-years-old, died in the line of duty in the 2003 bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad. His parents live near me on Vancouver Island and I really choked up when I met them for the first time. The recent killing of aid workers in northern Afghanistan - an area I am familiar with - was horrific and shocked many of us to the core.

On World Humanitarian Day, I think of people like Chris and his parents. I think of the young Pakistani women near Mansehra, cradling her terrified child after losing everything to the South Asian earthquake. I think of the farmers in the Irrawaddy Delta in Myanmar, their land inundated by salt water brought by an unforgiving Cyclone Nargis. And I think of the teenage girl I met in Kano State in Northern Nigeria, her limbs rendered lifeless because she didn't receive a polio vaccination.

We are often prevented from reaching beneficiaries by washed out roads, bad weather, road blocks, lack of air transport or heavy lift capacity, or violence started by state or non-state actors. It's important for us to be seen as neutral actors and to convince those in positions of power that we are there for one simple reason: to save lives. All kinds of live-saving materials pass through the cargo holds of airplanes we've managed to borrow, through the trucks we've leased and - ultimately through our hands and the hands of our partners: insecticide-treated bed nets, blankets, tents, water purification tablets, water pumps, high energy biscuits, syringes and medicines - you name it.

All-in-all, this career has exceeded my expectations by far. I count myself as extremely lucky and feel I have one of the best jobs in the world. On top of that I get to help people in need, help find solutions to their pressing problems. I am learning new things all the time, see the word and get to work with an awesome and diverse group of professionals!

Using Soccer to Fight HIV in Lesotho

(HN, July 10, 2010) Maseru, Lesotho -- In 2005 brothers Steve and Pete Fleming of the United Kingdom founded Kick4Life, a non-profit organization focused on tackling HIV/AIDS in Lesotho in southern Africa. 

They could not have selected a more needy country: Lesotho has the third highest HIV prevalence in the world - about a quarter of the population is infected - and hundreds and thousands of children have been orphaned by the disease. Out of a population of 1.9 million, there are an estimated 64 new HIV infections and 50 deaths due to AIDS each day. Kick4Life is committed to playing and important role in addressing this crisis. Kick4Life co-founder Pete Fleming. (PHOTO: MBociurkiw, HN, 2010)

Using football and sport to inspire, unite and make a difference by providing sports-based health education, voluntary testing, life-skills development and support into education and employment. 

Kick4Life has two main projects that it focuses on: National HIV Prevention and Testing Programme which includes the K4L Curriculum to youth across Lesotho. If focuses on heath education, HIV prevention and life-skills development. It also incorporates the award-winning Test Your Team Campaign – a series of one day football tournaments where HIV education and HIV testing is provided on site. Teams earn tournament points for completing HIV educational sessions, getting HIV tested, and for winning matches. 

In the last three years some 8,000 children have been tested, Pete Fleming told HUMNEWS in an interview. Most would have been tested for the very fist time.

The second project is the Orphan and Vulnerable Children (OVC) Initiative focused on supporting extremely disadvantaged youth who are living on the streets of Maseru, Lesotho’s capital city. It included the Maseru Street League, mentoring and Fit4Work - a training course offered to orphans and vulnerable children who have completed high school. The aim of the programme is to equip young people with the skills to continue into further education, training or employment. 

Pete - who has a degree in sport science - says that since its inception about 25,000 children have gone through a 12-hour education programme. "For the testing events we use football as the hook," says Fleming. "We arrange one-day football tournaments with interactive education focused on the importance of getting tested. We have trained up the national football team to deliver the curriculum to the youth. It's a tremendous tool to have."

 (A short video introduction to Lesotho.)

In addition to the work Kick4Life does they also play an active part in several international networks including Football for Hope, a global streetfootballworld and FIFA movement.  

Funding for Kick4Life comes from a variety of sources, including UNICEF, the Vodafone Foundation, Sentebale and the English Premier League. 

Some high-profile supporters have endowed Kick4Life with valuable publicity: in 2008, England coach Fabio Capello attended a testing event in Lesotho which was widely covered by the media. Kick4Life employs 15 people full-time and is backed by a network of 300 volunteers nationwide.

"We've been amazed by the volunteer ethic here in Lesotho," Fleming said, adding that most young people are educated but can't find jobs.

As a result of its achievements, Kick4Life was selected to host a sports health and education center as part of the official World Cup Campaign, 20 Centers for 2010. 

The aim of the 20 Centers for 2010 campaign is to create twenty Football for Hope Centers in disadvantaged communities across Africa as a legacy of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Each centre provides underprivileged communities with public health, education and football facilities.

The centre in Maseru, Lesotho will be located in the Police Training Grounds of Old Europa in Maseru and will help young people address social challenges such as HIV/AIDS awareness, education and testing; essential life skills; personal development and work training. The site of the new Kick4Life soccer pitch in Maseru. (PHOTO: MBociurkiw, HN, 2010)

At the moment, the field resembles an old soccer pitch but planned upgrades will transform the site into an incredible sports facility for children.

Kick4Life co-founder Peter Fleming says, “Being selected as a Centre Host as part of the official World Cup campaign is a fantastic development for Kick4Life that will provide a first-class- sports, health and education facility right in the heart of Maseru, Lesotho’s capital. It will enable us to deliver activities to thousands of orphans and vulnerable children in an aspirational setting, and become, we hope, a centre of excellence for the use of football as a tool for social development.”

Construction is due to begin in September 2010, with completion set for March 2011.

--- Reporting by HUMNEWS' Michael Bociurkiw, from Maseru, Lesotho.

Number of Orphans in Lesotho Continues to Grow

(HN, June 24, 2010) -- MASERU, Lesotho -- The number of orphans in the southern African kingdom of Lesotho continues to surge, with the latest data indicating as many as 270,000 - up from 180,000.

The figures were derived from the 2006 census and this newest number was recently released. However some sources put the number of orphans as high as 400,000.A woman in Maseru selling World Cup t-shirts (HN, 2010)

Most of the orphans come from families devastated by HIV AIDS. Lesotho has the third highest HIV AIDS rate in the world - with almost 30 percent of the adult population affected - according to the charitable organization Sentebale. It estimates that every day, 100 children in Lesotho are devastated by the death of a parent. With so few orphanages in the country only about one percent have access to institutionalized care.

In order that orphans and vulnerable children receive proper services several months ago, the country's Department of Social Welfare started a project to register all children that fall into this category. And in order to improve the well-being of vulnerable children, the government recently launched a "Child Grants" programme that provides a regular and unconditional quarterly payment of about $38 to orphans and other vulnerable children.

According to UNICEF: "The nexus of significant levels of poverty, chronic food insecurity and a high prevalence of HIV has dealt a serious blow to child survival, development and protection in Lesotho."

So ravaged is Lesotho by HIV AIDS and poverty that earlier this month several hundred people marched through the capital, Maseru, pleading for the landlocked country to be annexed by its wealthier neighbour, South Africa. Indeed, one South African immigration officer today, referred to Lesotho as the "tenth province."  She said thousands of people cross the border every day for work, though numbers are said to have dropped due to tighter movement restrictions imposed for the ongoing World Cup matches in South Africa.

--- Reporting by HUMNEWS’ Michael Bociurkiw.

Child Labour Concerns Ahead of World Cup in South Africa

(HN, May 17, 2010) - Organizations battling child labour have raised concerns about the vulnerability of children during the upcoming World Cup next month in South Africa.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) says the "economic bonanza" brought about by the soccer world's largest competition could draw many children into jobs that exposes them to exploitation.

"There is little experience in organising major international sporting events in settings where the number of poor and vulnerable children are so high," said UNICEF Representative to South Africa, Aida Girma. "Criminal syndicates may thrive during such events and target children in order to fulfil the perceived increase in demand for prostitution and drugs which the event is expected to bring."

Her comments came earlier this week after the International Labour Organisation (ILO) singled out sub-Sahara Africa as the region with the highest number of child labour cases. There had been a 28.4 percent increase in the number of cases - with 65 million, or one in every four children, said to be involved in child labour. The region also account for almost half of the world's out-of-school children.

While describing South Africa's efforts in addressing the scourge of child labour as "exemplary" - the constitution spells out the need to protect children from harmful forms of work and South Africa has amongst the highest school enrolment rates on the continent - Girma said its cities "serve as poles of economic opportunity in a context of extreme inequality, sub-regional poverty, and catastrophic levels of HIV/AIDS.

"While some child labourers are highly visible, such as street children working in the informal economy in border towns of Musina, others are hidden from view and exploited in the worst forms of child labour, for instance trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation."

UNICEF plans to establish so-called child friendly spaces at the public fan parks where the World Cup competitions will be screened for the general public: Soweto, Sandton, Port Elizabeth and Nelspruit. The areas wil be manned by trained social workers.

The child friendly spaces will not only provide recreation for children but will also provide a range of specialised services for vulnerable ones who have been separated from their families and those who have fallen victim to trafficking and exploitation. The staff will also do outreach activities, visiting night spots and other areas where children may be exploited for sex and for commercial activities.

UNICEF and the ILO would also promote adherence to international codes against commercial sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism as well as raising awareness. In addition, a "Red Card" campaign will be launched ahead of the World Cup to help disseminate strong messages about vulnerable children. They will be aimed at children, the general public, tourists and football fans.

Eradicating child labour in countries with large pockets of marginalized families can be challenging. Some countries, such as Turkey, has established vocational homes for children withdrawn from the workforce.

- Staff, files

Click here for Aida Girma's speech on this topic