Interview with UN Humanitarian Coordinator, Jan Vandemoortele

This month’s earthquake in Pakistan devastated much of the country’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, resulting in one of the largest and most difficult humanitarian relief efforts ever. One day before Wednesday’s upcoming donor conference in Geneva, Jan Vandemoortele, UN Resident Coordinator for Pakistan and recently appointed Humanitarian Coordinator, shared his thoughts with IRIN on the disaster and why the international community must act urgently. QUESTION: This earthquake has devastated much of northern Pakistan. Can you update us on the number of deaths, injuries and damage to infrastructure? ANSWER: The earthquake has been devastating. The latest numbers are 53,000 dead, 75,000 injured people – but again these are preliminary figures and are constantly being revised upwards, not downwards. Q: Do you expect those figures to go up? A: Yes, we expect those figures to go up, unfortunately. You have wild figures of some people saying they may double. We hope not, but they will certainly go up. Q: What are the main challenges you face logistically? A: The terrain and the weather are the two nightmares logistically speaking. The terrain is difficult to access in normal times. The good news is that roads have been re-established to the main towns in the affected areas. We still have a major nightmare getting into the valleys; the valleys where not only have the roads been blocked, they have been washed away and no longer exist. Q: In terms of complexity, how would you compare this disaster with others the UN has had to deal with? A: Comparisons are not an exact science in those areas. But anyone who is with me here on the ground, who has worked in other disasters, they all tell me this is an extremely bad disaster and very complex. Q: Coordination of assistance was initially reported to be quite slow. What is the situation on the ground now and what efforts are you taking to mitigate such criticism? A: The first reaction is always to get action on the ground and not coordination, which is probably good. We had search and rescue teams immediately on the ground, coordinated by OCHA [The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs] in Muzaffarabad within 24 hours. [However] The coordination has come on stream amongst the UN agencies and NGOs. The government is putting up its own infrastructure institutionally to face the crisis; they have established a Federal Relief Commissioner, they have established an earthquake recovery and reconstruction authority. The first one is for the short-term, the second one is for the longer term. Things are coming in place. We have meeting after meeting, consultation, we have put up databases and web sites. I think the coordination is up and running. Q: As winter fast approaches, what are your main priorities? A: Priority number one overall is shelter. Tents and probably emergency shelter, which means that they are probably going to be people who will not be able to be put under a tent. The strategy is to help use the remaining time before winter sets in to help those people rebuild part of their dwellings. The strategy is to deliver as many tents as possible, preferably give them the choice to locate the tent where they want. If that proves impossible, provide camps where people can be received for emergency shelter. In the mountains, drop off the tents and send in the troops, light engineering to assist in quick reconstruction to get through the winter and set up in the valleys some reception areas, getting the message out to the people who are up in the mountains, that if it really gets bad, there is a place where they can go. Q: This quake devastated the region, impacting millions of people. What time span are we looking at in terms of reconstruction and recovery? A: The relief effort will be the next six months when we get through the winter. As the spring comes, things will at least take a sense of normalcy, economic activity will resume, agriculture, etc. But the recovery and reconstruction, will take at least 10 years because the infrastructure is so devastated. The hospitals have collapsed, the schools have collapsed, and the roads have vanished. This is a major effort that will take several, several years. Q: Working closely with the government, have you got any idea as to how much this is going to cost? A: There are many numbers that are floating around. We know this is not an exact science, but the numbers we have floating around today don’t have much credibility. On the relief side [however], we already have a bottom number. We believe the relief effort for the immediate future from all sources, Pakistani sources and foreign sources, will probably be between US $1.5 to $2 billion. This is including the use of helicopters and airplanes, which is very expensive. The reconstruction itself will take at least five years as we said - and will probably take three or four times longer. Q: Have donors respond to this particularly complex disaster generously to date? A: Well it’s picking up. We have seen large contributions coming from countries such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). We have major contributions being made by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the US, UK, and others are in the pipeline. The pledging to our flash appeal is also improving, but its way behind the reaction we had with an earlier disaster of this scale and magnitude, which was the tsunami. Q: On Wednesday, donors are meeting in Geneva to discuss exactly this. What message would you give them at this critical time in the relief effort? A: We need to speed up. Money can buy everything we need - tents, food, blankets, water pumps, etc – the one thing money can’t buy is time. We need to speed up. That is why we are bringing the donors together on Wednesday, to explain clearly the magnitude of the disaster and the logistical nightmares we are facing with the winter coming in. We have updated our flash appeal. It is considerably more because we have now logistically planned in detail the use of helicopters – which is about one fifth of the total flash appeal that we believe is required because we need to keep the people in the valleys alive. But that can only be done, with a regular helicopter link to these places.