Update 2: 10 donors! 10 more to go! Also, floodwaters crest in Pakistan, though the potential for flooding still remains.

Update 1: Donation links added!

For those of you who haven’t been following the news, there’s been a huge amount of flooding in Pakistan due to the annual monsoon rains. The worst flooding in over 80 years. Over 20 million people affected, more than the 2004 Tsunami. 5 million homeless. 1,600 dead. Years of infrastructure development washed away in an already impoverished country: 5,000 miles of road, 7,000 schools, 400 health facilities, 800,000 people inaccessible by road. 17 million acres of farmland ruined.

I’m going to take a page from Livia‘s playbook and start a donation drive. For every person who donates to an aid organization that is currently in Pakistan and leaves a comment, I will pledge to donate $10 to Oxfam International, up to $200. A friend of mine (who requested to remain anonymous) has promised to match me. AND Oxfam International will be matching any donations to Pakistan through August 31st, so your one donation could generate up to $30 additional dollars! This drive will be open through Sept 6, but comment before August 31st so that I can give $ to Oxfam before the matching funds go away!

So please, donate and comment! There is a huge need. Unlike the 2010 Haiti Earthquake, which received extensive coverage here in the US, the Pakistani floods have been more of a footnote (where are you, Anderson Cooper?) Haiti received $2.5 billion in relief aid. So far, pledges to Pakistan have totaled only around $600 million. And the largest challenges are yet to come as the floodwaters recede: clean water, sanitation, and disease prevention. Food shortages, perhaps even for years. Not to mention the hard work of rebuilding the country’s infrastructure and restoring its shattered communities.

Donate!

• Oxfam International – matching donations until August 31st!
• Doctors without Borders
• International Red Cross and Red Crescent
• Unicef

“A heart-wrenching day for me and for my delegation. I will never forget the destruction and sufferings I have witnessed today. In the past I have visited scenes of many natural disasters around the world, but nothing like this. The scale of this disaster is so large and there are so many people in so many places in so much need.”" ~Ban Ki Moon, UN Secretary-General

Indus River, Flooded, August 12 2010

Indus River, Normal, August 9, 2009

NYT: Pakistan Flood Coverage

The Big Picture: Pakistan floods (Parts 1, 2)

A lifetime, Washed away

This disaster is not like an earthquake or a tsunami. In the 2005 earthquake in northern Pakistan, 80,000 people died more or less at one blow; whereas the immediate death toll from this flood is likely to be in the low thousands. The loss of property, however, is catastrophic. It is as if a neutron bomb exploded overhead, but instead of killing the people and leaving their houses intact, it piled trees upon the houses and swept away the villages and crops and animals, leaving the people alive.

For months and even years, the people of the Indus Valley will not have sufficient income for food or clothing. They will rebuild, if they can afford it, by inches. The corrupt and impoverished Pakistani government cannot possibly make these people’s lives whole again. ~Daniyal Mueenuddin

Why doesn’t the world care about Pakistanis?

The United Nations has characterized the destruction caused by the floods in Pakistan as greater than the damage from the 2004 Asian tsunami, the 2005 Pakistan earthquake, and the 2010 Haiti earthquake combined. Yet nearly three weeks since the floods began, aid is trickling in slowly and reluctantly to the United Nations, NGOs, and the Pakistani government.

After the Haiti earthquake, about 3.1 million Americans using mobile phones donated $10 each to the Red Cross, raising about $31 million. A similar campaign to raise contributions for Pakistan produced only about $10,000. The amount of funding donated per person affected by the 2004 tsunami was $1249.80, and for the 2010 Haiti earthquake, $1087.33. Even for the Pakistan earthquake of 2005, funding per affected person was $388.33. Thus far, for those affected by the 2010 floods, it is $16.36 per person.