UN warns Pakistan aid projects are in jeopardy

Islamabad: The United Nations yesterday warned it may have to shut down aid projects in Pakistan, after receiving only a fifth of the funds requested in an appeal for more than half a billion dollars.

The UN launched the $537 million (Dh1,97 million) appeal in February to feed and assist more than one million people displaced by conflict in Pakistan's northwest and in border areas with Afghanistan.

"The response by the international community to this appeal is inadequate," UN humanitarian coordinator for Pakistan, Martin Mogwanja, told a news conference in Islamabad.

"Humanitarian actors responding to the needs of the people are concerned that some of the projects may have to be suspended because of lack of finances," he said.

Mogwanja said that the UN had so far received only $106 million from the donors, which was just 20 per cent of the total appeal.

He said the UN urgently needed the funding, with 1.3 million people still displaced in the northwest and the rugged tribal regions.

Mogwanja stressed that displacement had not ended and there were more people on the move in the tribal regions of Orakzai and Khurram.

The UN refugee agency said on Friday that more than 35,000 families or around 210,000 individuals from Orakzai and Khurram fled the military operation and Taliban-linked violence since November. These people have been registered as internally displaced persons, mostly in the northwestern towns of Hangu and Kohat.

Last year, a total of 3.1 million people were displaced from their homes in North West Frontier Province and the semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the Afghan border.