UN, Red Cross say cash crisis hits quake relief

By Robert Evans

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations and the global Red
Cross/Red Crescent said on Monday that urgent cash support from
the outside world was vital to save thousands of lives as
winter moves in on homeless survivors of the Pakistan
earthquake.

The United Nations, struggling to raise $550 million for a
medium-term program to help quake victims and rebuild shattered
communities, appealed to donor countries for $42.4 million to
fund relief in the region this month.

And the International Federation of Red Cross and Red
Crescent Societies, whose calls for funding normally meet a
rapid response, said it so far had only 40 percent of the $117
million it asked for soon after the quake on October 8.

In New York, Jan Egeland, the U.N. humanitarian relief
coordinator, said the big race was to reach 200,000 people
living in the Himalayas above the snow line. Another 150,000
are expected to leave the mountains and join camps for quake
victims below.

“It will be a marathon sprint throughout the winter where
we have to do lifesaving assistance until the snow melts
sometime in April,” Egeland told a news conference.

He said many could freeze to death and appealed for stoves
in addition to the more than 300,000 tents already on the way.

“This is one of the most complex relief operations ever,”
said the federation’s Finnish secretary-general, Markku
Niskala. “I am appealing to people and governments around the
world to support us in this humanitarian work.”

Official figures now put quake deaths in Pakistan’s
northern region and the western part of Kashmir that it
administers at well over 73,000 with almost the same number
injured. Hundreds of thousands have lost their homes.

Egeland said he expected that number to rise, to perhaps,
80,000 because some of the 70,000 injured may die.

“People are dying now from wounds which could have been
treated earlier, and lives could have been saved,” he said.
“And people are presumably also dying in these villages where
we haven’t reached yet, high up in the mountains.”

Niskala, said that without a rapid cash injection relief
workers could not get survival equipment to many people who
would soon face diving temperatures.

PREVENTABLE DEATHS

Masood Khan, Pakistan’s ambassador in Geneva, delivered a
similar message to the U.N. meeting, called by the world body’s
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Relief, OCHA, which
Egeland heads.

“If we do not intervene aggressively now, many lives will
be lost,” Khan declared, according to the officials.

OCHA officials said that, as of Monday, only $83.8 million
had been received in cash and legal commitments from donor
countries — mainly the world’s richer nations — to meet an
overall U.N. appeal for $550 million launched in mid-October.

Together with oral pledges, the total response was $132.4
million, an increase of only $1 million over the past week
despite mounting warnings of a second disaster unless there is
a faster flow of shelter supplies and medical aid to the
region.

Of the $42.4 million OCHA wanted now as a contribution
toward the overall $540 million appeal, just under $18 million
would be earmarked for the U.N.’s refugee agency, UNHCR, for
setting up and managing shelter camps for the homeless across
the quake region before snow begins to fall.

Egeland said that in addition to the U.N. appeal some $232
million had been committed for emergency relief by the Red
Cross, NATO and individual nations. Another $600 million had
been pledged by individual countries for reconstruction that
might begin in a year but was needed now for emergencies.

(Evelyn Leopold at the United Nations contributed to this
report)