UUSC’s Rights in Humanitarian Crises Program has kicked into high gear to respond to the South Asia earthquake and bring our rights-based perspective to helping those in desperate need. UUSC is in contact with several organizations, including Pakistani nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and Islamic Relief (currently responding in Pakistan) and the All India Disaster Mitigation Center (currently responding in Indian-administered Kashmir), to discuss needs and partners.

In Pakistan, many local and community-based NGOs — UUSC’s natural partners — have been decimated by the earthquake, their buildings destroyed, and their personnel dead, injured, or evacuated. Other organizations are in areas that aid groups still have not reached. The overwhelming and widespread destruction, coupled with the fact that many destroyed and damaged villages are still cut off from aid by collapsed roads, landslides, and damaged bridges, points to the urgency of working with national organizations that know the area and can assess local capacity for response.

With the organizations mentioned above, UUSC is identifying partners to formulate a response in line with the goal of our Rights in Humanitarian Crises Program. UUSC will focus on groups that are usually disadvantaged in crisis situations because of their race, gender, and class and who are in danger of being overlooked, ignored, or marginalized in the provision of aid. 

Vulnerable populations

• Based on our knowledge of the region and discussions so far, vulnerability seems most defined by gender, age, and geography.

• Women are always more at risk in camps for internally displaced persons, and in the Northwestern Frontier Province and both areas of Kashmir, women are at a disadvantage in terms of equal access to education, resources, means of livelihood, and legal representation.

• Reports speak of many orphaned and injured children up to five years old. The number of deaths of children from five to 18 years of age is disproportionately high because of the widespread collapse of schools.

• The more remote villages are still not in contact with the outside world and will remain inaccessible except by foot and helicopter for some time. These communities have received no outside help, only assistance from neighbors. Unfortunately, just as these communities have not been attended to in the most critical phase of disaster relief, they will not be a government priority in the next phases, leaving them to fare as best they can.

UUSC’s focus
In the case of the Pakistan earthquake, UUSC’s focus will be on

• ensuring equal access to aid for women, particularly widows, and access to gender-specific material aid;

• providing security for women and girls in camps for internally displaced people;

• the inclusion of women’s voices in articulation of needs and operation of camps;

• extension of aid to remote villages that are likely to be left out of relief programs because of geography or politics;

• aid to internally displaced persons from Indian-administered Kashmir; and

• support to unaccompanied children, especially in terms of preventing trafficking.

Donate to the UUSC-UUA South Asia Earthquake Relief Fund.