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World Refugee Day: Pakistan IDPs Face Second Crisis

On World Refugee Day, a second crisis looms over more than 3 million displaced people in Pakistan as a severe shortage of sanitation facilities has led to outbreaks of disease.

Unsanitary living conditions have caused waterborne diseases and skin conditions to spread quickly amongst the displaced populations and local communities. Islamic Relief health teams have noted frequent cases of diarrhea, scabies, and malaria, all of which can be deadly, especially for young children.

Islamic Relief’s assessments of schools and homes where displaced people are sheltering have revealed that around 60 percent have no sanitation facilities or are in urgent need of repair. In almost half of these schools and houses water systems also need to be built or repaired.

One school in Khairabad houses more than 450 displaced people, yet Islamic Relief engineers did not find a single working restroom. At another school in Gul Bahar, displaced families had no source of water.

Islamic Relief aid worker Sultan Mahmood said:

“In the schools and houses I have visited nearly every family has a member suffering from diarrhoea or scabies as a result of poor sanitation facilities and unhygienic living conditions. I have seen up to 20 people sharing one small room, and with so many people living so close to each other these diseases are spreading fast.”

Islamic Relief health teams are concerned that as the monsoon season approaches these problems will get considerably worse. Every year the monsoon floods the region causing rates of malaria and waterborne diseases to soar. This year, with the influx of so many extra people, the impact is likely to be much more severe.

Islamic Relief is constructing restrooms, washing areas, hand pumps, and is carrying out hygiene awareness sessions in schools and households sheltering displaced people in Mardan District. We are also providing free healthcare at local health centers through mobile health teams. These services are helping displaced people and the local community in 26 villages.

Jerome Akram, Islamic Relief’s Worldwide Head of Programs, said:

“...Although most of the displaced people are not living in tents in camps, they are still facing very real difficulties, not least the serious health concerns we are witnessing.”

A Family Tragedy

Reesalat gave birth to her fifth child as she and her extended family fled from the troubled Swat region in North West Pakistan, but died 12 days later. She was just 28 years old.

Her younger sister Shahnaz explained what happened:

"It was chaos in our village, and I saw many people killed and others who were severely injured as they tried to run away. This experience left us all traumatized but unfortunately this trauma has been surpassed by our own misery.

There was no transportation available in our village so we had to leave on foot. We walked for one day and one night across the mountains. During this time my sister, Reesalat went into labor. We were far away from any health facilities and so we had to take her to a stranger’s house, where she gave birth to a baby girl, Laila. She is so beautiful, just like her mother...

Not long after she had given birth we had to start moving again. She was in a lot of pain and walking in the mountainous terrain was almost impossible for her.

Thankfully, we finally came to a road where we managed to find a truck to bring us all here, to Char Gulli. Initially we were living with a relative but the conditions were not good, so another family member from this area made this house available for us.

Reesalat was living here with Laila and her other four children. She was in a lot of pain and was bleeding heavily but there is no female doctor in this area and all she could do was get a little medicine from the local pharmacy. But this didn’t work and her condition continued to deteriorate; 12 days after giving birth she passed away.

Before the conflict came to our village and we had to flee, Reesalat had no health problems and her pregnancy was going well. We truly believe that the stress and trauma caused by the violence and the difficult journey we had to make after fleeing our village, lead to her death.”

It has been 25 days since Reesalat died and baby Laila and her other four children are now living with their uncle in a makeshift camp at a local school in Char Gulli. They are staying with 12 other family members in a dirty classroom which bare floors, broken windows and no furniture. The only possessions they have are a few blankets and cooking pots, but nothing else.

Conditions in the school are very poor and deteriorating by the day. There is very little access to clean water and many children are suffering from diarrhea, skin infections and respiratory problems.

Laila is underweight and has scabies but is receiving medical care from Islamic Relief’s health team based at the Basic Health Unit (BHU) in Char Gulli. Islamic Relief is installing water and sanitation facilities at the school, to try and prevent the spread of disease amongst the IDPs living there.

Laila’s 13-year-old sister Shah Begum has taken charge of caring for her baby sister since her mother’s death. But she is upset and traumatized by the death of her mother and is struggling to cope.

Children In Desperate Need of Support

There are nearly 3 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Pakistan, and field workers estimate that about 80 percent of them are children.

The children especially are very vulnerable and in urgent need of health care, nutritious food and psychosocial care.

Government officials have estimated up to 70 percent of them are traumatized.

Islamic Relief is setting up child-friendly Mercy Centers, where displaced children will receive medical care, food, schooling and psychosocial support from trained psychologists.

Mercy Centers are not only a place for the kids to have fun, but will also help separated children reunite with their families.

Aid workers have witnessed a rejuvenated sense of hope in the children the Mercy Centers are serving.

“At one of the centers, eight-year-old Tufail came running to me clutching one of the books,” Niyaz Muhamad, an Islamic Relief aid worker in Mardan, wrote in his diary.

“[Tufail] was very excited about the opportunity to read and learn again, and kept asking when the lessons would begin. It made me realize how important education is to children and how much it can help with resettling them after a traumatic experience,” he wrote.

Please help comfort displaced children in Pakistan, and donate today.

Aid Worker Diary

Islamic Relief aid worker Niyaz Muhammad (right) is in Mardan District where Islamic Relief Mercy Centers have been set up to serve those who have fled the fighting in Buner, Dir and Swat. In his diary, Muhammad reports on the situation in an area that has witnessed the displacement of nearly 3 million people.

Today, as we ran our first session to support children affected by the conflict, I realized how important our work is. The vast majority of displaced people are children and in the past few weeks their lives have been turned upside down. They have lost all that is familiar to them and are living in extremely difficult conditions with nowhere to play or study and in many cases, nothing to do.

At one of the centers, eight-year-old Tufail came running to me clutching one of the books. He was very excited about the opportunity to read and learn again, and kept asking when the lessons would begin. It made me realize how important education is to children and how much it can help with resettling them after a traumatic experience.

Islamic Relief will be working to ensure children have access to education again as they have not been able to study since they left their homes. Children from the local host communities have also found their education has suffered as their schools have been taken over by displaced families and turned into makeshift camps.

While at the center, I met a woman who has six missing children. 40-year-old Guloon has heard no news from them since she fled her village in Swat where they were staying with her eldest son and his family. Guloon had left them there while she visited relatives in Buner with her youngest daughter and then had no choice but to run to safety when the fighting suddenly started.

Guloon was unable to return to Swat to find her children and made her way to Mardan with her mother and sister-in-law where they found refuge in a local primary school. Since then she has heard no news about her children and fears that they were unable to escape. She was extremely distressed when she spoke to me and kept repeating that she thought her children were dead.

Islamic Relief will be working to reunite people who have been separated from their families and provide psychosocial support to help them cope with the traumatic effects of separation. For Guloon and many others, they may not know what has happened to their relatives until the fighting is over - and for them, this cannot happen soon enough.

-June 2, 2009