Category: New Zealand NGOs

Source: Save The Children

TIMIKA, Indonesia, 5 September 2023 – About 8,000 peopleare in urgent need of food support in remote areas of Central Papua in eastern Indonesia, after large swathes of crops were destroyed by a combination of hailstorms, severe frost and drought linked to the global El Niño phenomenon, said Save the Children.  

The aid agency is working with partners in Puncak, the district most affected by the drought, distributing much-needed blankets, cold-weather clothes and medicines to families impacted by the climate shock.  

Puncak is a mountainous area in Papua which regularly experiences low temperatures but has been colder than usual this year with more days of severe frost.  As the area is extremely remote, aid can only be delivered via airlift. 

The unusual weather has contributed to the deaths of at least six people across Papua – including a baby – since June when, stable crops were severely damaged by hailstorms. The following months brought an unusual lack of rain, along with frosts, which has created food shortages in towns and villages.   

Children and their families are also finding it difficult to access clean drinking water as many natural sources have dried up due to the drought.  

The drought conditions in Papuaare being linked to the global El Niño phenomenon, which started to impact Indonesia in June. Nearly half of the country is expected to see below average rainfall in September, with conditions expected to peak in coming weeks, but the impact of the delayed rainy season will be felt for longer. Rice production across the country has fallen by 1.2 million tonnes or 5% this year.  

Fadli Usman, Humanitarian Director, Save the Children Indonesia, said:  

“Thousands of children urgently need support across Papua. After the hail and drought caused crops to fail, they need food, as well as clothes and blankets to protect them against the cold weather.  We have managed to reach some areas by plane, but there are still people in remote areas that need assistance. 

“Papua is already seeing the impact of El Nino, on top of the effects of the climate crisis. Children in Puncak not only need emergency help now – they need long term, sustainable solutions to protect them from the climate crisis.  

“Save the Children has teams on the ground in Papua providing immediate assistance and is continuing to work with local and national partners. The Indonesian Government is working hard to respond – but more needs to be done to help vulnerable children and their families.’   

Save the Children has been operating in Indonesia since 1976 and works across the country in humanitarian responses and programs linked to education, health and nutrition, child protection, and poverty.  In Puncak, Save the Children is working with local partners to distribute essential supplies, and is assessing the needs of children and their families on the ground in order to plan a further response. 

ENDS  

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We have spokespeople who have just returned from Papua available in Indonesia.   

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Source: Save The Children

“One day they called me to tell me that I had benefited from the financial aid provided by Save the Children, that call was like a miracle for the whole family because we were going through a difficult time… I bought groceries to share with my daughters and grandchildren.” Patricia*

In the world of international cooperation, we constantly hear from within our organizations as well as from donors and other partners with whom we interact about the need to connect humanitarian aid with development response. However, we rarely find clear examples of how to move from one-off interventions during an emergency to sustainable, scaled-up responses to improve the well-being of our target populations.

During my recent visit to the Save the Children Colombia Office, I was able to witness concrete experiences of this nexus.

Given its proximity to Venezuela, Colombia is home to more than 2.5 million people who have left their country, according to the Inter-agency Coordination Platform for migrants and refugees from Venezuela (R4V), which makes it the country with the largest Venezuelan population in the region, and one of its most important arrival points is the area of La Guajira, as it is part of the border between the two countries.

The humanitarian situation for migrant populations in La Guajira has been going on for more than 4 years, which makes it necessary to think about medium-term and sustainable response strategies. Protracted crises as the Venezuelan migration expose the urgent need to effectively connect both humanitarian and development efforts. Social Protection represents an ideal mechanism to build this nexus, one that strengthens resilience and enables a transition into recovery and development.

Understood as all those public and private programmes that seek to prevent, reduce, and eliminate the socioeconomic vulnerabilities that lead to poverty during the life cycle, social protection acts both in regular times and during emergencies through instruments such as cash and in-kind transfers, social services and temporary employment programmes with the objective of mitigating the effects of shocks, and promoting the development of children and their families.

Under this scenario, in the area of La Guajira, Save the Children Colombia implements cash transfer programmes (CTP) for highly vulnerable migrant families with children, a critical humanitarian assistance to cover their most basic needs, but which is also complemented with other services such as a sexual and reproductive health unit, nutritional counseling, safe spaces for children’s learning, and case management and guidance for families in their migration processes in the country.

Patricia*, a beneficiary of one of the CTPs implemented by Save the Children Colombia and with whom I had the opportunity to talk during my visit, was extremely satisfied with these programmes, as they contributed to her livelihood in a new environment during the most difficult moments of her journey.

Patricia* and her family arrived in Colombia from Venezuela in 2019 seeking better life opportunities. However, the arrival in the country was far from easy, due to the lack of money, social networks and safety nets, and to the fact that their irregular status did not allow them to be formally employed to generate their own means of living. The cash transfer programme allowed them to purchase food, water, medicine and other basic goods for their children upon arrival. 

It was precisely through the case management and migration orientation services that complemented the CTPs that Patricia’s* family was able to benefit from the Temporary Protection Status for Venezuelan Migrants (ETPV), offered by the Colombian government from 2021 to 2022, which allowed them to have a regular migration status in the country. During national identification and registration campaigns, the Save the Children Colombia team accompanied migrant families participating in their CTPs to facilitate the registration process.

Once accessing the ETPV, people could be registered in the Identification System of Potential Beneficiaries of Social Programs (Sisbén), which is the prelude to access social protection and health programs and is one of the most complete and rigorous social registries in Latin America.

Indeed, due to Patricia’s family* vulnerable status, she told us that their Sisbén survey score, based on their socioeconomic characteristics, allowed them to access the Ingreso Solidario, a temporary social protection programme by the national government with the aim of mitigating the impacts of the emergency caused by Covid-19 for poor households.

The programme delivered monthly for almost 3 years the amount of $160,000 Colombian pesos (currently approximately $40 USD) to families whose Sisbén score ranked them as poor or extremely poor and who did not have access to other state programmes, yielding positive outcomes in terms of income, education, and food for the poorest people during the pandemic.

In addition, with their inclusion in the Sisbén, people also become part of the subsidized health regime, the mechanism through which the poorest population in the country, without the capacity to pay, has access to health services offered by the state.

Just as Patricia*, as a result of Save the Children Colombia’s support, many more Venezuelan families participating in La Guajira´s cash transfer programmes have been a concrete and fortunate example of how it is possible to move from one-off humanitarian aid to a scaled and sustainable response through the national social protection system to improve their living conditions.

Source: Save The Children

• The United Nations Africa Climate Week kicks off today in Nairobi with policymakers, practitioners, businesses and civil society meeting to discuss climate solutions ahead of the UN’s Climate Change Conference (COP28)
• Save the Children staff and children supported by the organisation are attending Africa Climate Week and are available to speak to media.

NAIROBI, 4 September – The total number of children in sub-Saharan Africa displaced within their home countries by climate-induced disasters nearly doubled last year, said Save the Children, as policy makers meet today in Nairobi to discuss solutions to the climate crisis.

Based on analysis of data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, at least 1.85 million children in sub-Saharan Africa were left displaced within their countries by climate shocks at the end of 2022, compared to one million children left displaced by similar crises in 2021. Some of these children were displaced multiple times, while others only once, but all remained displaced from home at the end of the year, living in camps, with extended family, or other temporary arrangements.

Flooding in Borno state and across other parts of Nigeria led to the country having sub-Saharan Africa’s highest number of new internal displacements due to climate disasters in 2022, with 2.4 million displacements. By the end of the year at least 854,000 people remained displaced by these shocks, including an estimated 427,000 children.

Meanwhile in Somalia, five failed rainy seasons forced about 6.6 million people – or 39% of the population–  into critical levels of hunger, and led to the second highest number of internally displacements at 1.1 million people.

The number of new internal displacements throughout the year across sub-Saharan Africa in 2022 due to such disasters was also three times higher than the previous year, with 7.4 million new internal displacements during 2022 compared to 2.6 million in 2021. This figure includes counts the times people were displaced – sometimes multiples times for one individual – even if they were able to return home by the end of the year.

This is the highest annual number of new displacements from climate disasters ever reported for the region, as the impacts of consecutive climate shocks have begun to sink in and both the resilience of the land and the coping mechanisms of communities become exhausted.

These figures lay bare the stark reality that the rights of children across the region are being eroded at an alarming rate by the impacts of the climate crisis, said Save the Children. Meanwhile, countries on the continent have contributed the least to the crisis, with the smallest share of global greenhouse gas emissions of all the world’s regions.

With the El Niño weather pattern taking hold, causing even more extreme weather events and pushing up global temperatures further, it is likely this figure is only increasing further this year, said the child rights agency.

Falmata*, 13, is from Borno state, northeast Nigeria, where flooding last year forced over 30,000 people from their homes.  She remembers: “On this fateful Friday I was returning from school and I kept hearing “rain is coming, rain is coming”. They gave us sacks to fill up with sand and place them in strategic corners. Suddenly I saw a big wave of water coming with speed towards our houses, everyone was in commotion, and my mum said we should pack our belongings and start running, we tried but we could barely pack enough. We ran to a school close to the house and took shelter with other community members affected by the flood. Our houses were submerged.

“Life has been hard, we got separated from family members and have not heard from them since. We found a small room that has sheltered us but the structure is bad, as it has been spoilt by the rain, the ceilings are leaking, and some parts of the room are open. When I see the clouds, I am scared and it brings back memories of the flood that happened before.”

13–year–old Maryam* and her family are currently living in an IDP camp in Baidoa after fleeing clashes and severe drought in southern Somalia. She said: “We had a small farm which was enough for our family and we have various crops on our farm, but we were forced to leave our farm because of the drought and conflicts.  Now it is difficult for us to get enough food for our family and we don’t have other sources of income. My father is disabled and cannot work. 

“We were told by our parents to leave the village and seek a better life elsewhere.It took us three days to get to a refugee camp in Baidoa.”  

Vishna Shah, Director of Advocacy, Communications, Campaigns and Media for Save the Children’s West and Central Africa Regional Office, said: “Falmata*’s experience with the floods last year is sadly all too common. In Nigeria and across the region, many children are, like, Falmata, terrified. They cling onto survival from one extreme weather event to the next, unsure whether unseasonable rains are a blessing for failing crops or whether they will wash away their homes.

“I am looking forward to seeing children voice their experiences and concerns to leaders at the Africa Climate Summit this week. Children have done nothing to cause this crisis – and they need the international community to deliver on climate finance commitments, including adaptation and loss and damage funding, that factor in children’s unique needs.”

Kijala Shako, Head of Advocacy, Communications, Campaigns and Media for Save the Children’s East and Southern Africa Regional Office, said: “When children lose their homes they lose almost everything: their access to healthcare, education, food, and safety. They also lose the building blocks for mental and emotional stability and wellbeing, like a sense of routine, their friends, and the right to play.

“These figures are enough to bring anyone to a standstill and hopefully will spur leaders at Africa Climate Week to wake up to the experiences of children across the region, acknowledge that the climate crisis is having a disastrous impact on their lives, and act urgently to factor in children’s needs and rights into the much-needed response.”

In the Horn of Africa, El Niño is historically associated with above-average rain during the October to December rainy season. As has been evidenced with rains in recent months, rains on the parched ground following almost three years of drought bring further risks of flooding, displacement, food shortages and disease. Meanwhile, the effects of the exceptionally strong El Niño in 2015-2016 caused drought over large parts of southern Africa, which could happen again this time.

According to a report earlier this year by the Children’s Environmental Rights Initiative, Save the Children and partners, just 2.4% of key global climate funds can be classified as supporting child-responsive activities, despite more than a billion children being at extremely high risk of the impacts of the climate crisis.

Save the Children’s global climate change programming work includes supporting children and their communities in preventing, preparing for, and recovering from climate disasters and supporting global leaders to protect children in emergencies. Save the Children is also actively monitoring forecasts and potential risks across regions and working with partners to help communities anticipate, prepare for and prevent the worst possible impacts.

ENDS

NOTES TO EDITORS

• Save the Children analysed data by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council. The number of internally displaced people (IDPs) by disasters across sub-Saharan Africa was 2 million in 2021 and 3.7 million in 2022.
• According to the 2022 NRC/IDMC GRID report, in Sub-Saharan Africa, exactly 50% of all IDPs were children, so these figures were halved to find the number of displaced children.
• As well as immediate emergency relief with objects such as soap, detergent, and clothes, Save the Children supported Falmata* and other children who were displaced from the floods in Nigeria with individual child protection case management support. Save the Children is also running a food assistance programme in their communities which the families benefit from. We run a Child Friendly Centre in the communities that children attend in the evening.

* Name has been changed to protect anonymity

For out of hours media requests please email media@savethechildren.org.uk or +44 (0) 7831 650409

Source: Save The Children

KHARTOUM, 1 September 2023 – Children and families living in near-siege conditions in  Kadugli in southern Sudan have run out emergency food supplies, with fighting blocking access to several major roads and medical services at a standstill, according to Save the Children staff based in the town.

Fighting escalated on 14 August, forcing over 50,000 people – including at least 30,000 children – to be displaced across the town of Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan Stateⁱ. Roadblocks have created a siege-like situation, with food stocks in Kadugli Town fully depleted, and attempts to bring in more supplies failing. 

According to Save the Children staff in Kadugli, many of the displaced families have fled with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Some of the families had only recently arrived in Kadugli having previously fled Khartoum, only to find themselves on the move for a second time.  Most of the movements in the town are of people fleeing the Hajr Al-Maak neighbourhood and going to the Al-Radaif neighbourhood, with many of the displaced families are now sheltering in schools.

While some roads are still open, Save the Children is concerned that the ongoing battle is already preventing essential aid supplies from entering the city. An estimated 160,000 displaced people lived in Kadugli prior to the attacks, of whom about 100,000 needed humanitarian assistance even before the conflictⁱⁱ

Save the Children has an established office in Kadugli, and its staff along with other humanitarian workers have been advised to restrict their movements. Two humanitarian compounds, not belonging to Save the Children, as well as many public buildings, have been hit by stray bullets during the clashes.

Save the Children staff remaining in Kadugli are working around the clock to reach the most vulnerable children impacted by the conflict, providing critical family tracing and reunification services for children separated from their families in the chaos, as well as food for children living on the streets.

Dr. Arif Noor, Save the Children’s Country Director in Sudan, said:

“We are deeply concerned for the children and families trapped in Kadugli. This is an evolving situation and our teams are doing all they can to keep services available to children while they themselves seek shelter.

“As fighting escalates, it is only going to become increasingly difficult for families to leave Kadugli, and for humanitarians to reach them. In many ways the town is under siege, as food stocks have totally run out and there is no way to replenish them. Those who remain and are injured will not get the medical treatment they need to survive. There is a very real risk that children will start dying from hunger. These families have already fled their homes once in the last few weeks. This latest fighting means that families once more have to flee, some with nothing in their possession.

“The international community needs to recognise and treat the conflict in Sudan as the large-scale emergency that it is, and act accordingly. This is a major and growing emergency. The international response so far has been woefully short of what is needed. Food, water, shelter, medical supplies, protection support for children – families in Sudan need the absolute basics to survive.”

The situation in Kadugli and South Kordofan remains extremely volatile, with roads connecting Khartoum to Kordofan and Darfur blocked, limiting the movement of essential humanitarian supplies.

At least 435 children have been reported killed in the conflict across Sudan, and at least 2,025 children injured, although these figures are an underestimate and the true toll likely to be far higher.

Save the Children has worked in Sudan since 1983. In 2022, Save the Children directly reached 2.1 million people, including 1.5 million children, with programming focused on child protection, access to quality education, health and nutrition support and responding to emergencies. 

NOTES:

• [i] According to a memo received by Save the Children from the Humanitarian Aid Commission in South Kordofan, some 10,000 households have been displaced by the current fighting. In Sudan the IOM uses an estimate for household size as five people (two adults and three children), thus 10,000 households = 50,000 people including 30,000 children, although this is likely a lower estimate.

• [ii] 2023 Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO).

For more information please contact:

For out of hours media requests please email media@savethechildren.org.uk or +44 (0) 7831 650409

Source: Save The Children

Myroslav*, 12, and his cat Olha at his house in Kharkiv region, East Ukraine. More content available here

KYIV, 31 August 2023 – More than 40% of children in Ukraine will not be able to go back to school fulltime when classes open 1 September and will have to rely on online or hybrid learning due to a lack of bomb shelters in schools and threat of air strikes, Save the Children said today.

As the second academic year in wartime starts, the number of children set to attend in-person education is expected to increase to 2.3 million from 1.3 million last school year. But an estimated 1.7 million children – or 42% – will have limited access to in-person teaching, according to assessments by Ukraine’s Ministry of Education. This includes about one million students who will rely solely on remote learning. ^[1]

Myroslav*, 12, lives in a village in eastern Kharkiv region, just 70 km (43 miles) from the frontline in Donbas. Myroslav is in sixth grade, but he has already spent half of his education learning from home, first due to the COVID pandemic, and now because of conflict.

“I might go blind soon because I use my smartphone so much for lessons. How long have I been using it this way – two or three years? I cannot understand the information properly. If it is offline – it is better”, Myroslav* said. “I used to have better grades than now. Sometimes the internet goes out, there’s lagging, and we cannot hear our teacher. It is a common problem.”

Myroslav* is likely to start another academic year from home as the threat of shelling is high in the area. On studying during the first year of the war, he said: “We had rocket launcher attacks just outside the village. Every five minutes something was flying overhead. How could one study like that?”

Only schools equipped with bomb shelters that can fit all students and staff during air raid alerts are allowed to fully re-open. According to the Prime Minister of Ukraine, only three out of four schools have these protective shelters. A total of 4,000 shelters are yet to be built or refurbished in schools across the country, mostly in Kherson, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Kharkiv and Dnipro regions, where the threat of air strikes is highest.

The school that Yevheniia*, 16, attends in Dnipro has a shelter, but it can only accommodate a portion of students and teachers, forcing her to learn primarily from home. While Yevheniia*’s marks have suffered, she is most worried about her social skills moving forward into adulthood. This will be her final year at school before graduation and applying to university.

“Online learning has affected my relationships with classmates. There is less communication, so I have started to feel lost in society. I cannot find the right words, or express my opinion on certain topics,” Yevheniia* said.

Since the escalation of the war in February 2022, more than 360 education institutions in Ukraine have been destroyed, and about 3,400 more damaged – most of them in frontline areas.

“The school in our village is destroyed because it was hit by missiles. After the school collapsed, I had to study online. And our internet is bad. On 1 September, I want my school to open,” said Maryna*, 12.

She attends classes provided by Save the Children’s mobile learning groups in Mykolaiv region. The groups help children to access curriculum materials, digital learning devices and software in remote communities. Up to 80,000 teachers and 200,000 children from disadvantaged backgrounds across Ukraine lack laptops or tablets to maintain stable access to online classes.

Even in the parts of Ukraine that are further away from active combat, it is still dangerous for children to attend school asthe threat of missile strikesremains high across the country. Air raid alerts are daily, forcing children to rush from classrooms to underground shelters.

“Everything is ready for learning at our school. As for the shelter, we have the basement. At the end of the previous school year, there were strikes, and it was a little scary. We felt anxious and tired because of constant danger and loud explosions,” Nina*, an eight-grader from Kyiv region said.

“We can already distinguish it by sound, whether it is a missile or a drone flying. But I want a peaceful sky without missiles.”

Sonia Khush, Save the Children Ukraine Country Director, said: 

“Children in Ukraine face another year of disrupted education. While there have been some improvements from last year, millions of children still do not have access to adequate in-person teaching. 

“After two years of war, we have thousands of children who have not set foot in classrooms or met their teachers and classmates in person. Going to school is vital not just for children’s education, but also for their social skills. Schools should be safe, happy places for children to learn while being supported and protected. These are some the most crucial years of their lives, and any disruptions to education can have long-term consequences all the way to adulthood. Children must be able to study without fear and anxiety over their safety.”

Save the Children calls on the adherence to obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law, and ensure that civilians and civilian objects, especially those used by children such as homes, schools, and hospitals, are protected from attack.    

In Ukraine, Save the Children helps to rehabilitate damaged schools, kindergartens, and shelters, and has established a network of Digital Learning Centres to help children access online education. The aid organisation also trains teachers, develops offline applications so children can enjoy reading at any time, and distributes Education Kits which contain pens, colouring pencils, notepads, and educational materials. 

–END–

*names have been changed to protect identity

NOTES:

• [1] Methodology: In May 2023, 1.321 million (33% of total 4.001 million total students) children in Ukraine were attending schools in-person, while 1.475 million students (36.9%) were learning online, and 1.205 (30.1%) million were learning in blended mode, combining online and offline classes, according to Ukraine’s Ministry of Education. A total of 2.68 million children had impaired access to in-person education.

  In September 2023, an additional one million of students are supposed to access in-person education, according to MoE prognosis; an estimated total of 2.321 million (58% of 4.001 million total students) children are expected back at schools this academic year, while the remaining 1.68 million students (42%) will be accessing classes either online, or in blended mode.

  Of 1.68 million school students, Save the Children estimates about 55% of children (1.475/2.68=0.55=55%) or about 925,000 (1.68*0,55=0.925) to learn online, and 45% of children (1.205/2.68=0.45=45%) or about 755,000 to study in blended mode.

• Save the Children have rehabilitated seven schools and 15 school shelters across Ukraine so far so children could return to offline learning. The aid organisation has also established 80 Digital Learning Centres (DLC) across Ukraine for children to have safe and supportive environment that provides access to electronic devices and learning software.

  In frontline Mykolaiv region, Save the Children established a Digital Learning Centre for teachers so they have access to electronic devices whenever they need to hold online classes, and can host in-person lessons with some of their students. The aid organisation also runs mobile learning groups to bring education to children in remote communities severely affected by war.

For more information please contact:

Please also check our Twitter account @Save_GlobalNews for news alerts, quotes, statements and location Vlogs.

Source: Save The Children

Essam* and Lina*

Essam and Lina are 12-year-old students in Taiz, Yemen. They attend a school that has been severely impacted by the war.

Around eight years ago, the school was partly destroyed in a bombing.

The facility is both cold due to a lack of windows and crowded due to a lack of desks. The dilapidated, unkempt state of what remains of the school makes learning difficult for the students.

In addition, landmines are a constant danger within as well as en route to the building, with several devices having exploded randomly in recent years.

As a result, many students are afraid to enter the school grounds.

Despite these challenges to their education, Essam* and Lina* are determined to succeed.

Looking forward, they dream of the landmines being removed and their school being rebuilt so that they can study in safety. In the future, both Essam and Lina dream of becoming dentists.

At school, Essam and Lina are active members of the students’ council, which is supported by Save the Children. The students’ council is a platform for children to engage in leadership and community-building activities.

Through their involvement in the students’ council, Essam and Lina have been empowered to take leadership roles in promoting protection and well-being in their community.

They have led a project, with support from Save the Children, to paint some of the walls of their destroyed school and to draw flowers to brighten up its appearance.

The project has not only made the school more welcoming but it also showcases how the community’s children are willing to take action to make things better.

Source: Save The Children

Content available here

SINDH PROVINCE, PAKISTAN, 30 August 2023 – One year after Pakistan’s worst floods on record, children are terrified of a repeat of the disaster that submerged a third of the country and claimed more than 1,700 lives, Save the Children said.

Children have told the child rights organisation that the death, destruction and displacement they lived through last year was still deeply affecting their lives and the past few months’ monsoon rains and flooding in some of the same areas that were inundated last year have made them scared that it could happen again.  

About 8 million people were displaced at the height of the crisis although many people have now returned to their homes. There is no current data on how many people remain homeless or living in temporary shelters. Some schools damaged in the floods are yet to reopen and food prices have surged in recent months, raising concerns about child malnutrition in flood-affected areas. 

Save the Children is calling on the world to stop looking away, and to pledge urgent financial support to fully fund a recovery that meets the needs of children. International donors also need to provide support that acknowledges the losses and damages that Pakistan has suffered as a result of the climate crisis – to which children and communities in the country have done little to contribute.   

Ahmed Khan, 8, from Khairpur in Sindh province in the south-central Pakistan, was nearly killed when the floods swept through his home. He said: 

“Everything was flooded. My parents and uncle saved my life after a wall fell directly on me. I thought I would die.  It took two months of medical care before I started feeling better, but I still get headaches now and then.   

“I’m scared of going near buildings that might collapse. I’m terrified that something similar may happen again. 

“My favourite food is chicken and roti (bread) but during the floods, we had to go to bed hungry as there was no food available. For three months, we had to survive on just rice.” 

Safeer, 12, is also from Khairpur, and was born with a disability that means he does not have any arms. He recalled the terror he felt as the waters approached his home: 

“We suddenly heard people shouting and screaming loudly, followed by the flood. As the floodwater filled our entire house, we were in grave danger of drowning. 

“We were drowning in water because our land was at a lower level than the surrounding area, which caused the water to flow to our land.  

“In order to protect ourselves from flooding in the future, we are asking for homes in a safer location”.  

Safeer had to flee his home but has luckily been able to return.  

The impact of the climate crisis on the world’s most marginalised children are impossible to ignore in Pakistan, Save the Children said. Even before last year’s devastating floods, the country was ranked by the Global Climate Risk Index as the world’s eighth most vulnerable to climate change – while contributing less than 1% of the world’s total global carbon emissions. 

In addition to the floods, parts of Pakistan are experiencing intensifying heatwaves and droughts, with temperatures reaching 50°C last spring. A long drought before last year’s heavy rainfall made the flooding more likely as the parched land could not quickly absorb the heavy rains.  

Khairpur, which was at the epicentre of last year’s floods, is also one of the hottest places in Pakistan. Temperatures here regularly exceed 40°C , jeopardising children’s  health and wellbeing.  More than 800,000 children in Sindh were at risk of severe heat stress in June 2023.

For Safeer, these heatwaves are also jeopardising his right to play as he is forced to stay inside to shelter from the scorching sun. He said:  

“I have noticed temperatures rising and stronger sunshine. We avoid going outside due to the heat because the sun’s beams are so intense.” 

Soaring food prices have further exacerbated food shortages for families. In July, the cost of food increased by 40% compared with the same month in 2022. Food shortages are estimated to impact even more people towards the end of 2023, potentially pushing more and more children into hunger and malnutrition. In the flood affected areas, an estimated 3.5 million children are severely malnourished. 

Save the Children also raised the alarm about extreme weather events projected as a result of climate change and further compounded by the naturally occurring El Nino phenomenon which is likely to increase global temperatures even further. Pakistan could see reduced rainfall that may lead to drought, with the impact on crops, livestock and food production peaking next year. 

These effects that the flooding has had on children in Pakistan shows how vulnerable they are to the impacts of the climate crisis.  

Save the Children’s CEO, Inger Ashing, has been visiting flood affected areas in Pakistan. Speaking from Sindh, she said:  

‘These floods have devastated children’s homes, schools, physical and mental health – their entire lives. And yet many children are still without homes, 30,000 schools are still in need of urgent repair – and children are telling us they are terrified. I’ve heard their concerns and now we need to take action. 

“Only through bold measures can the lives, hopes and futures of millions of children in Pakistan recover and be protected from future disastrous impacts of the climate crisis.  

“The international community must take a three-pronged approach – it must fully fund the ongoing humanitarian response; it must fully fund Pakistan’s ambitious recovery and climate resilience plan; and it must make bold commitments at COP28 to support countries, like Pakistan, for the climate related loss and damages they have incurred and will continue to endure. Ensuring that children’s rights, voices and unique experiences are at the heart of this approach must be a priority.” 

ENDS 

NOTES TO THE EDITOR:    

Save the Children Pakistan was the first INGO to respond to the 2022 floods emergency and has reached 545,753 people to date, including 265,727 children. We have programmes addressing children’s needs for food security, education, health, nutrition, water, sanitation and hygiene.  

In Sindh province, Save the Children continues to support affected families through the distribution of cash, health and nutrition treatment and livelihood recovery programmes. 

The Pakistan Floods Response Plan has been extended to the end of 2023. International donor governments and aid agencies must fully fund the plan to ensure the humanitarian needs of 9.5 million vulnerable people are met. Funding must also be fast and flexible to enable the UN and other aid agencies to effectively respond to the immense and evolving scale of humanitarian needs, including those arising from the latest monsoon rains.   

Save the Children has been working in Pakistan since 1979, since when it has reached more than 14 million children and families with health and nutrition, education, child protection, livelihoods and humanitarian response programmes.  

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