Aamir Qureshi—AFP
Baroness Valerie Amos was named the U.N.’s under secretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator in July. The Briton heads the world body’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), which is managing the global response to Pakistan’s devastating floods. Amos spoke with Newsweek Pakistan’s Qasim Nauman in Islamabad recently. Excerpts:
Having toured some flood-hit areas, what’s your initial assessment?
We’re facing a humanitarian crisis on a very large scale. We’re talking about 20 million people spread across a geographical area the size of England. I feel very strongly that people just don’t appreciate the scale of what has happened here. Over a period of time, we’ve been seeing the equivalent of an emergency, a disaster, every few days. It happened, it happened again, and it happened again as the water flowed from north to south.
How does one stem the feared “second wave” of deaths from disease?
We’re seeing higher levels of malnutrition, but we need to remember that we’re starting from an already low base. Access to sanitation is a huge problem, and we need people to have access to potable water. We’ve also seen an increase in skin diseases. The people looking at water, sanitation, and nutrition are now putting together a strategy, the outcome of which will be reflected in the revised appeal that I will make soon.
What are the next steps the humanitarian community intends to take for Pakistan?
In Pakistan, there is what we need to do immediately, in terms of what I take back to my colleagues at other U.N. agencies and NGOs, in terms of what we need to do to boost our capacity, what we say to our donors about the funding we need, and what we need to do in terms of getting supplies in … We’ve seen very good examples of countries where they have managed to bring casualties from flooding down steeply because of what they have put in place in terms of preparedness. We need to learn lessons from that. But we need to do other things, as well … I think we really need to challenge ourselves on whether or not we have been thinking in the most creative and innovative ways about how we handle these kinds of large-scale emergencies. We need to be realistic about what we can achieve, but we need to make sure that we are as efficient and effective as possible in our response.
How are security concerns affecting international relief work here?
Humanitarian workers are unfortunately experienced in working in difficult environments. What we always seek to do is to get the balance right between the duty of care that we have to our staff and getting out there and really assist in saving lives. The sense I get from talking with everyone is that there is a recognition that in certain places the security environment can be difficult, a concern that we are realistic about.
Prime Minister Gilani recently suggested that most aid coming through NGOs is going toward overheads.
Given the nature of the emergency, we need to get things here very quickly. We’ve had to use a lot more airlift than we normally do, which has greater costs attached to it than bringing things in by sea. Aid agencies tend to try to source as much locally as they can. Given the scale of what’s going on here, they are having to go further and further out. The need for increased funding is not about any increase in overheads—it’s much more about the need.
Are you satisfied with the coordination of relief efforts?
There are some parts where it’s working very well, but I think we can always do better. And in some parts we simply don’t have the people and the capacity on the ground, where the ability to coordinate is extremely limited. It’s a very complex area because coordination is required between our NGO partners, with our own agencies, with local and national governments. All of this poses challenges and can be extremely time-consuming, but coordination is strong and essential to saving lives.