Special Report: Pakistan
Families Caught in the Crossfire
More than two million people have been displaced by the fighting between Pakistani forces and Taliban militants in north-western Pakistan. As the humanitarian crisis deepens, the International Rescue Committee is racing to provide lifesaving food, shelter, water and health care to thousands of families.
Photo: REUTERS/Mian Khursheed, courtesy www.AlertNet.org
"Like Rwanda and Bosnia"
Hundreds of thousands of desperate people are still fleeing violence every day. Relief funds are scarce and time is running short, says IRC country representative Mike Young, who compares the current scale of displacement in Pakistan to the wars in Rwanda and Bosnia.At a glance
Photo: REUTERS/Mian Khursheed, courtesy www.AlertNet.org
- The IRC came to Pakistan to help millions of Afghan refugees in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980.
- Since then we have been assisting refugees as well as host communities in North-West Frontier Province.
- IRC emergency teams aided more than 230,000 survivors of the devastating earthquake of 2005 and helped their communities "build back better."
- The vast majority of families fleeing the current violence in the Swat Valley and other volatile areas of north-western Pakistan do not reach camps for the displaced but live with family or friends or are squatting in schools, abandoned buildings and other makeshift shelters.
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