Flooding Impacts Continue to Devastate Pakistan, Especially Its Women and Girls

Months of extreme flooding have devastated all four of Pakistan’s provinces: Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, and Sindh, plus the Islamabad Capital Territory, causing outbreaks of diseases, food security issues, and a lack of shelters.

The United Nations Satellite Centre imagery points towards an estimated 8 million people still exposed to flooded areas.

On January 9, the U.N. and the government of Pakistan hosted a “Climate Resilient Pakistan” conference where they sought funds from around 40 countries and private international donors who committed over $9 billion to help the country recover.

Shad Begum, a founding director of the Association for Behavior and Knowledge Transformation in Pakistan, has worked closely with women and girls’ education and political participation rights for over a decade. Begum, who is based in Islamabad, said the country needs as much aid as it can receive.

“Most of the areas that have been affected, like Sindh and Balochistan… these provinces are already not very developed,” Begum said. “There is an issue in education and health, and the populations there already do not have access to very good facilities. After the floods, these limited resources have also vanished, and now the situation is getting worse.”

Most of Pakistan’s infrastructure has been destroyed, including roads, bridges, health care facilities, schools, markets, and communication and internet systems.

“We already do not have very good disaster preparedness and risk management systems in Pakistan,” Begum said. “It has been very much a critical situation for the health institutions and government to take care of in all the different areas. Especially pregnant women have not been very well taken care of, and the outbreaks of skin diseases and water-borne diseases [amongst them] are huge.”

Begum said some provinces are also expecting snow in January, and the winter weather has many people worried about their living arrangements and relocations because the scale of the damage done in Pakistan has been vast.

“In the initial days [of the 2022 floods], some people got shelter, food, and other things, but with the passage of time, the long-term needs have not been addressed,” Begum said. “People who are still living in tents and camps are very temporary arrangements. January will be a month when people will be very much worried about what will be happening and when they will see [the country’s] preparation.”

Begum emphasized how women and children must be prioritized in receiving immediate shelter, food, and health care because the flooding has severely impacted them.

“Among the data, 70% of Pakistan has been affected, and 80 percent of the people impacted have been women and girls,” Begum said. “Lots of women have not been able to access their schools because the bridges and roads were damaged, and lots of people have also just had to relocate to other areas where they do not have education facilities. This is not the first time this has happened. In past floods, many children did not have the opportunity to attend school for months and for some, even a year.”

According to Pakistani authorities, the 2022 floods were much worse than in 2010.

Begum stressed her mental focus for the last year has been to help communities receive what resources they can because most of her work and advancements in women’s rights in terms of political participation and education have been put on pause.

“Our mental health is very much affected because we are unable to help our communities,” Begum said. “We were not prepared for this, and neither was the government, so it is very difficult to maintain a good mental health and keep up the pace of work we used to do in our communities.”