UN passes resolution urging support for flood-ravaged Pakistan

UNITED NATIONS: The UN General Assembly expressed solidarity on Friday with flood-battered Pakistan and called on the international community to increase aid and keep up the political will to support the country’s recovery long-term.

The assembly passed a resolution that made all those points. It also urged the UN to step up efforts to “sensitise the international community’’ to Pakistan’s needs and “mobilise effective, immediate and adequate international support and assistance.” Record-breaking floods in the developing South Asian country have affected 33 million people and killed 1,700 or more since mid-June. Nearly 8 million people were displaced, and hundreds of thousands are still living in tents and makeshift homes.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who saw some of the damage for himself during a visit last month, reminded the assembly of the losses: more than 2 million homes damaged or destroyed, while and crops and livestock were ravaged. He said the disaster could thrust more than 15 million people into poverty.

The UN also has sounded alarms about the potential for a second crisis of waterborne and other diseases amid the inundation, which damaged many of Pakistan’s health facilities.

“The situation is going from bad to worse,’’ Guterres told the assembly. “Pakistan is on the verge of a public health disaster.’’

The UN has appealed for $816 million to fund aid to Pakistan through May, but Guterres said that sum “pales in comparison to what is needed on every front.”

The world body and the Pakistani government are planning an international support conference to ramp up contributions.

The people of Pakistan are the victims of “a grim calculus of climate injustice”, Guterres told Assembly, reminding that while the country was responsible for less than one per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, it is paying a “supersised price for man-made climate change”.

He described floodwaters covering a landmass three times the total area of his own country, Portugal, saying that many lost their homes, livestock, crops and “their futures”.

“Lives were washed away”, he said.

“Many have no shelter as winter approaches,” he said.

At the same time, the scale of crop and livestock destruction is “creating a food crisis today and putting the planting season in jeopardy tomorrow”, Guterres said.

“Severe hunger is spiking. Malnutrition among children and pregnant lactating women is rising. The number of children out of school is growing. Heartache and hardship - especially for women and girls - is mounting,” he elaborated.

The effects of the floods will be felt not just for days or months but will linger in Pakistan for years to come.

As the calendar moves quickly to next UN climate conference (COP27) in November, he said: “the world is moving backwards [as] greenhouse gas emissions are rising along with climate calamities.”

The UN chief stressed that COP 27 must be the place where these trends are reversed, serious action on loss and damage taken, and vital funding found for adaptation and resilience.

Reminding that the G20 leading industrialised nations drive 80 per cent of climate-destroying emissions, he called it their “moral responsibility” to help Pakistan recover, adapt and build resilience to disasters “supercharged by the climate crisis”.

Noting that a third of Pakistan had been deluged, Guterres said that many island States face “the very real prospect of their entire homeland going under”.

“Communities everywhere are looking down the barrel of climate-driven destruction,” he said. “We must act - and we must act now”.

While this time it was Pakistan, the Secretary-General warned that tomorrow, “it could be any of our countries and our communities”.

“Climate chaos is knocking on everyone’s door, right now,” he concluded. “This global crisis demands global solidarity and a global response.”