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Nov. 10th, 2005 08:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lapsedmodernistI can't remember any other time that I encouraged people here to donate (except maybe to organizations investigating electoral fraud), but I really hope anyone who can will donate something here. Everyone donated to help people after the tsunami last year and after Katrina, but it's like these earthquake victims are completely forgotten by the world community, they are remote and (non-tourist) third-world enough that they don't get the same media coverage. No crying Geraldo, no outraged Oprah, no rallying of the ex-presidents. They are screwed. From everything I am reading, aid is pathetically small from the international community and because it's what a wonderful world Pakistan refused aid from India, which is best qualified to help in the region. But that's not the fault of the people who are going to freeze in a couple of weeks. Please consider donating through one of the non-creepy organizations. I wanted to donate through MSF, but couldn't find how to earmark the $ for the earthquake, but I know other people who donated through them. I ended up donating through the Red Cross, it's easy to check what you are donating for on their website. Oxfam and Save the Children are also good ones. Fuck, if everyone on my friends list donated $20, it would be almost $3,000. Consider this a meme.
The situation now is even worse that it was a week ago when this story ran,
Pakistan-controlled Kashmir (CNN) -- Dozens of villages containing hundreds of thousands of people have received little or no aid nearly four weeks after a devastating earthquake hit Pakistan and India.
With the official death toll in Pakistan alone now topping 73,000, questions are being asked about the pace of relief efforts and the lack of international aid flowing to the region.
An estimated 3.3 million people remain homeless as winter approaches in the mountainous Kashmir region, raising fears of an even worse humanitarian disaster to come.
Apart from an aid shortfall, the region's challenging terrain is hampering the relief efforts.
In the remote Pakistan village of Chhumber, devastation accompanies desperation as temperatures drop to freezing and the first snows of winter threaten.
Since the 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck on October 8, this village has had to survive on the occasional food drop by helicopter and minimal supplies delivered via the rough and treacherous mountain road.
"My future is black," one woman said. "I lost my husband, I have no home, no blankets, no tent and the snow is coming."
Another woman had had two of her children die but she cannot afford to think too much of them. Her concern now is for her baby and her young boy who has a broken arm that needs attention.
"It is painful, it is tragic. There are no words that can describe this," Javed Rathore said.
Rathore, who has returned to his home village from the U.S. to help with the relief effort, urged the Pakistan government and the international community to do more.
"I don't know how these people will survive. They have nothing," he said.
It is a scene repeated across the region.
The quake affected more than 2,775 villages, 41 of which have not yet been reached, Pakistan's Maj. Gen. Farooq Ahmad Khan said Wednesday.
Another 69,000 have severe injuries, according to the general.
Top U.N. relief coordinator Jan Egeland said Wednesday, "there are many thousands, potentially tens of thousands, up there in the mountains that are wounded we haven't gotten to."
A "second wave of death" could come from "people who could freeze to death, starve to death, or just be sick because of infected water," he said according to a report from The Associated Press.
U.N. officials say money for distribution of relief supplies is running dangerously low. Donors have pledged $131 million of the $550 million sought by the United Nations for emergency quake aid.
Egeland said international aid for the quake relief had so far been far less than what it was following last year's Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, which killed 178,000 people and left an additional 50,000 missing.
The situation now is even worse that it was a week ago when this story ran,
Pakistan-controlled Kashmir (CNN) -- Dozens of villages containing hundreds of thousands of people have received little or no aid nearly four weeks after a devastating earthquake hit Pakistan and India.
With the official death toll in Pakistan alone now topping 73,000, questions are being asked about the pace of relief efforts and the lack of international aid flowing to the region.
An estimated 3.3 million people remain homeless as winter approaches in the mountainous Kashmir region, raising fears of an even worse humanitarian disaster to come.
Apart from an aid shortfall, the region's challenging terrain is hampering the relief efforts.
In the remote Pakistan village of Chhumber, devastation accompanies desperation as temperatures drop to freezing and the first snows of winter threaten.
Since the 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck on October 8, this village has had to survive on the occasional food drop by helicopter and minimal supplies delivered via the rough and treacherous mountain road.
"My future is black," one woman said. "I lost my husband, I have no home, no blankets, no tent and the snow is coming."
Another woman had had two of her children die but she cannot afford to think too much of them. Her concern now is for her baby and her young boy who has a broken arm that needs attention.
"It is painful, it is tragic. There are no words that can describe this," Javed Rathore said.
Rathore, who has returned to his home village from the U.S. to help with the relief effort, urged the Pakistan government and the international community to do more.
"I don't know how these people will survive. They have nothing," he said.
It is a scene repeated across the region.
The quake affected more than 2,775 villages, 41 of which have not yet been reached, Pakistan's Maj. Gen. Farooq Ahmad Khan said Wednesday.
Another 69,000 have severe injuries, according to the general.
Top U.N. relief coordinator Jan Egeland said Wednesday, "there are many thousands, potentially tens of thousands, up there in the mountains that are wounded we haven't gotten to."
A "second wave of death" could come from "people who could freeze to death, starve to death, or just be sick because of infected water," he said according to a report from The Associated Press.
U.N. officials say money for distribution of relief supplies is running dangerously low. Donors have pledged $131 million of the $550 million sought by the United Nations for emergency quake aid.
Egeland said international aid for the quake relief had so far been far less than what it was following last year's Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, which killed 178,000 people and left an additional 50,000 missing.
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Date: 2005-11-11 02:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-11 02:47 am (UTC)A good friend of mine over there, who's knows what he's talking about, wrote this to me the other day:
"We have good access to policy-makers and know that the army is sitting on the real casualty figures, which are at least double the official numbers. It seems that the (un)official policy is to starve the remote villages into mass migration, against their will, to these big tent cities."
Lovely.
Anyway, he's involved with relief efforts and I've asked him whether he has any suggestions for the best ways to help.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-11 02:49 am (UTC)how do they expect them to get there through the snow?
no subject
Date: 2005-11-11 02:58 am (UTC)My read was that he meant that those who could migrate would be induced to do so through withholding of relief supplies, and that the others, who couldn't, might simply be left to die. I don't know.
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Date: 2005-11-11 03:07 am (UTC)"International and U.S. agencies with a presence on the ground in the earthquake zone and that accept tax-exempt donations from U.S. citizens, residents, and private groups include:
--Action Against Hunger (http://www.aah-usa.org/),
--CARE (www.careusa.org)
--Mercy Corps (http://www.mercycorps.org/),
--Oxfam America (http://www.oxfamamerica.org/), and
--World Food Program (http://www.wfp.org/).
Appeals for funding also were issued by Pakistani organizations with U.S. offices and international reputations for financial, political, and religious independence. These include:
--The Citizens Foundation (http://www.tcfusa.org/), a not-for-profit organization working to provide quality, secular education to less-privileged children. The group said it was providing care packages of tents, blankets, and food to 20,000 people; had set up three field hospitals; and was researching the best suited design to build 5,000 new earthquake-resistant homes over the next two years, and
--The Eqbal Ahmad Foundation (http://grassrootsonline.org/weblog/earthquakeaid.html), a Princeton-based organization that said it would channel contributions directly to relief and rebuilding initiatives led by faculty and students at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan. No portion of the money would be used for administrative expenses, said the group, which estimated that, working with local residents, it could rebuild a one-family home for as little as $1,000."
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Date: 2005-11-11 03:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-11 04:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-11 05:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-11 03:15 am (UTC)http://mediagirl.org/node/813