Pakistan denies report about starving Baloch
children
By Khalid Hasan
Mon, 25 Dec 2006
WASHINGTON: An internal UNICEF assessment has alleged that Pakistani authorities are preventing aid groups from helping more than 80,000 people -
many of them acutely malnourished children - who have been displaced by fighting in Balochistan, according to the Christian Science Monitor,
Pakistani authorities have refuted the report as “overblown.”
The UNICEF report, which a correspondent of the newspaper in Pakistan claims to have been shown, is said to paint a “disturbing portrait.” UNICEF and
provincial health officials, who surveyed the area in July and August, report that 59,000 of those suffering are women and children and that 28 percent of the
children under five were “acutely malnourished”. Six percent of the children were so underfed that they would die without immediate medical attention. “I would
say this now qualifies as a ‘crimes against humanity’ situation,” says one foreign observer who has interviewed delegates from the region.
According to the correspondent, Gretchen Peters, for six months, aid agencies and diplomats have been pressing Pakistan authorities to permit them to distribute
aid packages, which include emergency rations, tents, and medicine. The UN will not deliver aid without permission from the host nation, Robert van Dijk, the top
UNICEF officer for Pakistan, told her. He and other aid workers say provincial officials have continued to assist his local staff in monitoring conditions in southern
Balochistan, but more senior provincial and federal officials have simply refused his requests or derailed efforts with endless bureaucratic hurdles. “We have
tried everything to get our aid there,” said van Dijk. “I even know of aid groups that tried to deliver relief without permits, but they got turned back on the
road.”
Peters reports that Pakistani authorities have dismissed the UNICEF report as overblown, saying the majority of people in Balochistan is poor and nomadic, and
most of those displaced by the fighting have returned home after Akbar Bugti’s killing. “This report is untrue,” said Maj Gen Shaukut Sultan, spokesman for the
Pakistan Army. “Almost all of those people have gone back.” While van Dijk agrees that some did return home in September, he claims that a recent UN
assessment has shown that other villagers have since been displaced.
“When we went back there recently, we found the same numbers of people,” he says, “and even worse conditions - among the worst I’ve ever seen.”
UN help sought to save IDPs from starvation:
Balochistan instability displaces 84,000
By Baqir Sajjad Syed
ISLAMABAD, Dec 21: The government on Thursday sought United Nations intervention to help avert nutrition crisis among 84,000 displaced persons in
Balochistan. They were displaced due to instability in the province.
This is the first official acknowledgement of the deteriorating nutritional situation among internally displaced persons IDPs in Balochistan, a senior UN official told
Dawn.
In the past, the government had been rejecting the presence of IDPs in the province and had prevented aid groups from helping them. Among the 84,000 IDPs,
26,000 were women and 33,000 were children, according to UN estimates.
A letter received by the UN system in Pakistan from the Balochistan government said: “The UN agencies may carry out nutritional intervention in districts of
Naseerabad, Jaffarabad and Quetta."
These districts house majority of the IDPs. The remaining are in Sibi and Bolan districts.
The intervention by the UN has, however, been made conditional. It will be carried out through health facilities in the districts and under the supervision of local
authorities.
The United Nations has approved a $1 million humanitarian relief package for six months to address this crisis. The package includes immediate setting up of 57
supplementary feeding centres and three therapeutic feeding centres in the three districts, provision of food, medicine and nutrition for children, blankets, water
purification and sanitation equipment and technical assistance.
Unicef will carry out the relief operation, while the UNDP, the WHO, the UNFPA, the WFP and the UNHCR will support it. The government decision to involve the aid
agencies comes after an intense persuasion by the UN to accept humanitarian assistance for the IDPs in the province.
The issue came in limelight after one of the UN internal assessments had revealed that the survival of several thousands children was in great danger. The
assessment had found out that there were some 84,000 IDPs in the province.
The report prepared by Unicef on the nutritional status of women and children among the IDPs showed that 28 per cent children under the age of five were `acutely
undernourished’. Out of them, six per cent was in the state of `severe acute malnutrition’. According to WHO standards, the situation was critical.
The assessment revealed that 80 per cent of deaths among the IDPs were children under the age of five. Senior UN official Ronald Van Dijk described them as
`innocent victims’.