UN conference to push for more aid for quake victims

Ministers and high-ranking officials from 65 United Nations member countries were to meet today in a new attempt to mobilise funds for the victims of south Asia’s devastating earthquake before winter sets in.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will open the donors conference in Geneva after a minute of silence in honour of the victims.

The October 8 quake left 79,000 people dead and an estimated 3.3 million homeless.

Ministers from numerous governments will attend the meeting, for which 278 participants have signed up. Alessandro Minuto-Rizzo, deputy secretary-general of Nato, which has provided significant help to the victims, and Jan Egeland, the UN’s top relief co-ordinator, also will attend.

So far, donors have been slow to respond to the fund-raising appeals. The United Nations, which is spearheading international relief efforts, has only received a third of the $312m (€258.2m) it has requested.

By comparison, the UN flash appeal after last December’s Asian tsunami was more than 80% funded within 10 days of the disaster.

“We expect a lot from the donor conference,” said Christiane Berthiaume, spokeswoman for the World Food Program

“We hope to see the same response to Pakistan as to the tsunami, but we are far from there because the financing is far from adequate.”

To make matters worse, relief efforts are hampered by massive logistical problems, continued aftershocks and mudslides in Pakistan’s mountainous area.

Two and a half weeks after the earthquake struck, many mountain communities in the remotest areas are still out of reach.

“Governments meeting in Geneva today must put their hands in their pockets and pay their fair share. The public will be shocked that so many rich governments have given so little,” said Oxfam’s policy director Phil Bloomer.

Oxfam accused rich countries of “failing to respond generously” and singled out seven countries, among them Belgium, France, Austria, Finland, Greece, Portugal and Spain, who it said had so far given nothing to the UN appeal.

Oxfam also said the United States, Germany, Italy and Japan had given less than one fifth of their fair share – calculated according to the relative size of their economy as a proportion of the total from major industrialised countries.

With winter around the corner, aid agencies are warning of a new death wave. “A second humanitarian disaster looms for the 4 million people without a roof over their heads,” said EU Development Commissioner Louis Michel.

Donor agencies are scrambling to get shelter and food to thousands of victims as first snowfalls are expected within three weeks.

“This is a race against time and weather,” said Jemini Pandya, spokeswoman for the International Organisation for Migration.

Aid groups are using mules, rafts and hikers to get food to those in need. Many survivors are collecting aid and taking it home on foot, the UN said.

Desperate to get their hands on more tents, several aid groups are working together with the military to build shelter from locally available scrap metal. Although 200,000 tents are already in the pipeline, a further 210,000 winterised tents are needed along with blankets, stoves and fuel.