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IDPs face discrimination, can’t access aid, says AI

AI has cited some two dozen cases where displaced Pakhtuns have been told they cannot rent property, access health care or place their children in school without security clearance. - File photo
PESHAWAR: The Amnesty International has asked the Pakistan’s central and regional governments to urgently do more to assist more than two million people who have fled fighting in Northwestern Pakistan but do not have access to aid distributed in official displacement camps.
‘In particular, the Pakistani government must ensure that ethnic Pakhtuns fleeing the fighting do not face discrimination in receiving assistance’, said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Director, in a press release issued here.
‘As the fighting expands to North and South Waziristan, a displacement crisis that the government had said would last only for weeks looks set to go on for months, with no relief in sight for the millions of displaced people,’ he said.
‘To make matters worse, the vast majority of displaced people are living outside the registered camps where aid agencies are distributing shelter, food and water to those in need.’
Nearly 90 per cent of the displaced people do not have access to organised camps and live in extremely overcrowded conditions with host communities or in existing slums and abandoned buildings. Amnesty International has documented numerous instances of three or four families sharing one household, greatly straining the ability of host communities to provide sufficient food and clean water for everyone.
It added that the World Health Organisation had warned of a significant risk of communicable diseases with the advent of hot weather and the monsoon.
‘The Pakistani government has to ensure that the millions of displaced people, and their hosts, get the required assistance’, Zarifi said.
Conditions are particularly difficult for displaced people who have sought shelter in other provinces of Pakistan.
Of particular note, Amnesty International has documented some two dozen cases from Pakistan where displaced Pakhtuns have been told they cannot rent property, access health care or place their children in school without security clearance – something particularly difficult for many people who lost their documentation as they fled.
Conditions seem particularly difficult in Sindh province, where some local political groups have fanned fears that the influx of Pakhtuns would threaten the local population.
According to local aid groups, more then 200,000 displaced people have already reached various cities in Sindh, including Jamshoro, Kotri, and Sukkur, joining millions of Pakhtuns already living in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city.
A leader of the Sindh Taraqi Pasand Party, a local group opposing aid to the displaced, told Amnesty International: ‘All the nationalists of Sindh are against the settlement of displaced people from the NWFP or any other place as Sindhis are being turned into minority in their own province. We are afraid that once these displaced people will come to Sindh and they will not go back and will become a burden on our economy. We will not allow non-Sindhis to occupy the land which belongs to Sindh and Sindhis.’
‘People who lost everything as a result of the fighting are now being treated as second-class citizens in their own country,’ Sam Zarifi said. ‘The central and local governments must ensure that all internally displaced Pakistanis, regardless of ethnic group or background, are treated in accordance with the UN guiding principles on internal displacement and have adequate food, water, shelter and healthcare.’