To commemorate the first anniversary of the devastating of 2010 floods, ActionAid Pakistan, in collaboration with its local partners and the flood affected communities from across Pakistan is holding a two day event titled ‘People’s Forum: Rebuilding Lives Post 2010 Floods’ in Islamabad, which will commence on Tuesday (today).
The 2010 floods were the worst humanitarian disaster in the history of Pakistan with almost two thousand reported casualties, 1.6 million destroyed houses and twenty million displaced people. Rehabilitation is still at an early phase – the full recovery will take some years due to the magnitude of the disaster, but the one-year anniversary of the floods is a good opportunity to do some initial evaluation of the rehabilitation work carried out by government and humanitarian side. The Forum will provide an opportunity to the flood affected people, especially the most vulnerable among them (women, widows, children and landless farmers) to share their experience of the unprecedented disaster and put forth a ‘charter of demands’ to policy makers, parliamentarians, the civil society and the media.
The forum will also focus on ‘Prioritizing Women in Flood Rehabilitation’, with an emphasis on violence against women, and women’s right to land in the post-flood situation. This will be followed by testimonies from flood affected women. The afternoon session will talk about ‘Food, Agriculture and Livelihood Challenges And Way Forward’. The discussion will especially focus on the ‘food price hike’ and ‘increasing food insecurity amongst flood affected people’, followed by an interactive session with small and landless farmers hailing from the flood affected areas. Day two will focus on panel discussions and listening to people’s testimonies and community interaction around governance issues, especially watan cards, the national disaster management act, and public financing of disaster preparedness. In the afternoon, community representatives will present their ‘charter of demands’ to policy makers and the media
The event will be an interactive forum in which flood affected people from different parts of Pakistan will share their experiences and appraise the rehabilitation work carried out so far. Invitation is open for all those who wish to show support for the flood affectees and are interested in charting an affective rehabilitation plan for the future.
