UN presents post-quake recovery plan

The United Nations has introduced a one-year action plan for humanitarian agencies and donors involved in the transition from relief to reconstruction in quake-hit northern Pakistan, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a press release on Monday. “The humanitarian plan covering a one-year period [from April 2006] is a set of guidelines for the donors to identify how and where to expend the money concretely,” Jan Vandemoortele, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Pakistan, said while presenting the plan recently in Geneva. More than 80,000 people were killed, over 100,000 injured and nearly 4 million people were rendered homeless after a 7.6 magnitude earthquake ripped through an area of about 28,000 sq km in parts of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Pakistani-administered Kashmir in early October last year. Nearly five months on, the sustainable return of displaced quake survivors is assuming priority, as Islamabad intends closing most official emergency settlements at the end of March. There are over 600 planned and spontaneous relief camps scattered across quake-affected areas. “As the weather is improving, a small number of people have already started returning spontaneously. Male members of several families visit their places [former homes] during the day to rebuild their houses and return back [to the camps] in the evening,” Vivian Tan, a spokeswoman for the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told IRIN in Islamabad. But the threat of camp closure has left many survivors afraid of what life will be like after March. The biggest fear is how to make ends meet in parts of the country still blighted by the destruction. According to a recent livelihood assessment by the UK-based charity Save the Children, 40 percent of agricultural land has been lost to landslides after the earthquake and at least a third of livestock has been killed, including prized buffalos, which can cost between US $600 to $900 to replace. The UN’s transition action plan identifies transitional shelter, restoration of livelihoods, institutional and legislative capacity development to handle land and property management, psycho-social support, protection of vulnerable groups such as children, women, tenants and the landless, and the return of internally displaced people, said the OCHA statement. “The priority is to ensure that the tens of thousands of families return to their villages and hamlets in a voluntary and dignified manner,” Vandemoortele commented during the briefing in Geneva.