Low on Trust, Pakistan's Flood Victims Go Unaided

Pakistani authorities say 20 million people -- 6 million of them children -- have been affected by recent monsoon rains that flooded an estimated one-fifth of the country's land. By the numbers, the disaster has impacted more people than the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haitian earthquake combined.

Despite the enormous need, international aid for Pakistan is slow in coming. Millions are stranded without food and safe drinking water in an affected area equal to the size of Austria, Switzerland and Belgium combined. The lack of aid has many wondering what the international community is waiting for as Pakistanis wade through the disaster alone.

The devastating earthquake in Haiti last year set the high-water mark for both contributions and teams who volunteered to assist. More than $1 billion in funds were raised by generous donors, leading many humanitarian aid groups to hope that similar revenues of support would come for Pakistan.  

Disaster relief experts maintain need and urgency often is determined by the human death toll. With fewer causalities from the flood compared to earthquakes and tsunamis, news organizations may equate fewer deaths with less demand for emergency relief.

There's a perception that "if you don't have huge numbers of dead, somehow the devastation isn't as massive as those instances where you do," said Donna Derr, director of development and humanitarian assistance for Church World Service.

The funding gap may be closing, but slowly. On Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the U.S. is boosting its pledged amount from $90 million to $150 million. That's still only half of the $459 million the UN says is required to meet the initial relief estimates.

According to the aid group CARE International, two weeks after flooding began in late July, the same international aid agencies and the United Nations had contributed $58 million. Haiti received $241 million during the same period after its disaster - more than four times as much. The number of Christian organizations helping Pakistan, however, is far below the number of those groups who came along side Haiti.

Phillip Zodhiates, a fundraiser with the Virginia-based Response Unlimited, speculates funds could be slow in coming due to uncertainty how donations might be spent by the Pakistani government.

"With Haiti we saw what happened with some pretty trustworthy sources like the American Red Cross," Zodhiates said. "If Christians are being ostracized and not given assistance then donors need to be very careful where they send their money."

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