Humanitarian Assistance to Children in Pakistan

Save the Children Provides Humanitarian Assistance to Children and Families Displaced by Fighting in Northwestern Pakistan

Save the Children has launched a broad relief effort to assist children and families forced from their homes and villages by intensified fighting in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP).

Approximately 150,000 to 200,000 people have been displaced in the last four days, with some estimates suggesting that another 300,000 more people are likely to move in the coming days. This would bring to more than 1 million the number of children and adults who have fled conflict in northwest Pakistan since August 2008, according the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.

Save the Children — as part of a coordinated response and in partnership with the government of NWFP and local authorities — will be working to ensure that children and families affected by the crisis receive emergency assistance, including health services and hygiene and household supplies. The agency also will work to provide protection and education programs for children in camps or temporary shelter. Most displaced families (more than 80 percent) are not living in the camps.

Save the Children is focusing its efforts on separated children, women-headed households, families with children under 5, and families that include an injured or chronically ill family member.

“Children in this area are extremely vulnerable. The area is prone to manmade and natural disasters, and the lengthy conflict and intermittent fighting over the past one-and-a-half years has stressed household reserves, disrupted the local economy and resulted in the destruction of hundreds of schools,” said Ned Olney, who heads Save the Children’s humanitarian response efforts globally. “People have, in many cases, left their homes with little more than the clothes on their backs, and there is a desperate need for food and other basic items. Basic health services are also badly over-stretched.”

Save the Children has worked in Pakistan for more than 25 years — helping improve the lives and well-being of Afghan refugees and Pakistani children and women. The agency has a strong portfolio of health, education and emergency response programs, while continuing to address needs of Afghan children and families who remain in Pakistan. Save the Children also is working in areas affected by the 2005 earthquake.

For further enquiries please contact Jon Bugge on +44 20 7012 6648 / +44 7506 788 703 / j.bugge@savethechildren.org.uk

For information regarding Save the Children New Zealand please contact Shelley McCarten on 04 381 7573 / 021 108 9131 / shelley.mccarten@savethechildren.org.nz

ENDS

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