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The floods that began in August 2011 and swept across the province of Sindh and part of Bolochistan resulted in one of the most destructive disasters that Pakistan has experienced.

Three months after widespread flooding that has affected over 5 million people in southern Pakistan, a critical shortage of funding and broad international disinterest has left millions of people at risk of illness, malnutrition and cold as the winter closes in.

A year has passed since the first news reports alerted the world to unnaturally heavy monsoon rains in Pakistan’s north-western province of Kyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), a region already ravaged

Disasters do not have lead to devastation, and today Oxfam called on the Government of Pakistan and the international community to invest in measures that reduces and manages the risk of disasters at district and community levels.

Pakistan is one of the world’s most hazard-prone countries, with each humanitarian crisis costing lives and money and deepening the alarming levels of poverty and malnutrition.

This Pakistan Development Forum meeting was a rare chance for donors to think outside the box for solutions to tackle some fundamental issues thrown up by the floods – one of the most devastating natural disasters this country has ever seen.

International aid agency Oxfam has started an emergency response to get aid to those affected by flooding in the Sindh, Punjab and Baluchistan provinces of Pakistan. This is the third consecutive year of flooding in Pakistan and many of those affected had not fully recovered from last years’ mega-floods.

  Consuelo Lopez-Zuriaga, Oxfam Head of Humanitarian Campaigns, said, 

Pakistan does not currently mobilize sufficient tax revenue required to finance essential public services, including healthcare and education, on which the poor rely the most. Consequently, these services remain inadequate, hampering efforts to reduce poverty and address extreme inequalities.Furthermore, the current tax system in Pakistan is seen by many as unfair and inequitable. Two-thirds of tax revenue is mobilized through indirect taxes, which are regressive in nature and unfairly burden those least-able…

People in the Swat Valley in Northern Pakistan hit by the catastrophic floods were only just recovering from the conflict that forced them from their homes last year, said Neva Khan, Oxfam’s Country Director in Pakistan.