More than 100,000 quake victims need proper shelter this winter - UN

For 7-year-old Shebaz and his sister, it is difficult to know what their family will do. They lost everything in last year’s devastating earthquake in northern Pakistan and now face an uncertain future. “I don’t have a house to go to,” he said casually outside his family’s tent in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir. “I guess we will live here for a while,” he said smiling. But under the stifling midday sun, there were few smiles on the faces of the other residents at the small, tented community in the heart of the city. Not knowing what to do or where to go and with their numbers large, their plight will undoubtedly prove a key challenge for the authorities and donor community in the months ahead, aid workers say. More than 100,000 quake survivors will be living in tents and transitional shelters this coming winter, as well as for the foreseeable future, the UN’s top official in the country warned on Friday. “We are talking mostly about people living in urban centres,” Jan Vandemoortele, United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Pakistan, told IRIN in Muzaffarabad, citing cities and towns where very little reconstruction had taken place. “They will be living in organised camps, mostly tents as well as other forms of shelter,” he maintained, adding: “This is not because anybody is not doing his or her work - but simply because the situation is so complex”. His comments coincide with the first regional launch of the US $300 million one-year Early Recovery Plan (ERP) aimed at bridging the gap between relief and reconstruction in the quake-devastated region by Pakistan’s Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA) and the UN system in the country. The launch follows similar events in New York, Geneva and the Pakistani capital, Islamabad in May, to galvanise further donor support. The goal of the plan is to support the longer-term road to reconstruction by bridging the end of the relief phase and the start of full-scale reconstruction. With over $100 million already secured, the plan offers concrete proposals to channel another $190 million worth of pledges out of $6.2 billion committed for quake relief during last November's donor conference for reconstruction. Under the plan, efforts to boost health, livelihoods, water and sanitation, housing, shelter and camp management, as well as governance and disaster risk reduction, will be made.

Two sisters outside a tented community in quake-devastated Muzaffarabad

More than 73,000 people were killed and thousands more injured when the 7.6 magnitude quake ripped through Pakistani-administered Kashmir and Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) on 8 October 2005, rendering more than 3.5 million people homeless. Of the 300,000 displaced by the disaster, some 200,000 have returned to their places of origin, many through assistance by the UN. But according to Vandemoortele, of those remaining, many are not displaced at all. Like Shabez, they live in camps in close proximity to their destroyed homes or property, but lack the necessary shelter to return. Added to that are people who might have had a place in the mountains, but could not return due to landslides, property disputes, concerns over food security and access, as well as vulnerable persons such as orphans, widows, the physically handicapped and the elderly. “There are certainly going to be over 100,000 people,” Vandemoortele confirmed, citing a current figure of 80,000 people in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, as well as another 50,000 in NWFP.