The ongoing militancy in Swat and the operation against the militants in the area has resulted in insurmountable hardships for a huge population of the area. The militants have occupied their houses, property and other public places. Pakistan Army came to rescue and is still struggling to washout militants. Frustrations, disappointments and open life threats compelled the population of the area to move to the safer places of NWFP.

Sungi is providing support to IDPS living outside camps with the host families. Details about people displaced to different districts that are living with host families and/or registered till May 23, are as follows:

Relief activities of Sungi Development foundation

Facilitation in Registration process of IDPs

Sungi being a rights based humanitarian and development organization is trying to help the affected communities & playing its role  minimize the affects of this man-made disaster, since early 2008 and supported a number of families living with the host families in Mardan and Lower Dir. A number of advocacy and coordination initiatives were undertaken to ensure relief assistance to support the IDPs to access their rights with dignity.

To respond the recent crises, Sungi emergency response team carried out initial quick assessment in Mardan, Swabi , Abbottabad, Mansehra, Haripur and Battagram.

Sungi is supporting social welfare department to register the IDPs living with host families in district Abbottabad, Haripur and Mansehra, through its district offices. Banners were placed on visible places to guide IDPs about the registration process and venue. Detailed assessment was also carried out during the registration process. Sungi ’ s experienced staff and trained humanitarian volunteers are engaged in assessment and they would also support relief assistance.  Briefing  on sphere standards, humanitarian and accountability principles were arranged for staff and volunteers and copies of the same were provided to staff, and volunteers.

Need Assessment

Due to the sudden change in situation and army operation, dwellers of Swat, Dir and Buner left their homes without basic necessities and living in miserable situation without the basics necessities. Shelter, food, clothing and hygiene are the dire needs of the people living with the host families. Their hygienic condition particularly of women and children ’ s is poor. Infants and young children are facing severe starvation due to lack of milk and infant food. Government of NWFP and NGOs have taken some measures to accommodate IDPs in camps and providing relief assistance to host families. Majority of the IDPs are still living with the host families or in rented houses and are not able to arrange basic livelihood necessities. This situation is perpetuating problems not only for IDPs but overburdening the host families and exerts increased pressure on their existing livelihood patterns. Hence it is not considered a sustainable solution to the problem because the host families, mostly, will not be able to bear the extra load on their household economy. They are living in miserable conditions and need immediate assistance from humanitarian agencies. 

Distribution of Food and non food items

With the support of CWS Sungi  provided  food and non food items in Mardan and Swabi. During this week  (12-16th May),   229 tents, 200 food packages & 916 blankets were provided to the most vulnerable families. Women headed households, minorities, poor and those with disable household members were preferred. 

Sungi while focusing on vulnerable groups established a specific plot for women headed households and disabled in Sheikh Yasin Camp Mardan.  Fifty nine tents have been installed for these families. In this camp a PCO has been established by Wireless point to provide free calling facility to the women of the camp and others to contact their family members who are missing.

Sungi with the support of Haripur zone installed tandoors for the IDPs in Pak China fertilizer company colony to provide immediate support to the newly arriving families. The basic objective of this activity was to establish a community based cooking mechanism to facilitate the women in cooking process. Sungi with the help of a private company provided bedding, electric water coolers, fans and tents the minority IDPs who migrated from Buner. Sungi also provided medicines in district Haripur while facilitating a medical camp organized by civil society organization.

 Sungi also facilitated the process of food distribution made by district government in Abbottabad. Sungi women staff especially supported the distribution process for women IDPs.

Summary of the support provided - Food Package and Tents for Swat /Buner IDPs

Distribution details of beneficiaries in Mardan district

Distribution details of beneficiaries in Swabi district

Advocacy Initiatives

Together with other civil society organizations of the affected areas humanitarian network (HN) was established to highlight issues of the IDPs and influence policy makers and humanitarian agencies to address their problem ensuring humanitarian principles. A number of meetings of this network was held. A press conference was organized by HN in collaboration with other civil society organizations in Islamabad on 21st May, 2009. The civil society demanded for easy and swift process of registration, preparation of computerized NICs of the IDP families, provision of electricity in camps, ensuring security and taking concrete steps of safe evacuation for those who are still in conflicted areas. Sungi and other partners had received considerable guidance and support form Oxfam Novib in materializing this initiative.

In addition Sungi is regularly organizing consultation meetings of IHI (Insani Huqooq Ittehad) to highlight the issues of IDPs living in camps and outside camps. Sungi is going to organize a conference on IDPs issues in Islambad in collaboration with Church World Service, and other.

Development of coordination mechanism with civil society organizations & government

In Mansehra, Sungi ’ s representative at District Disaster Management Information Center is facilitating social welfare department in registering IDPs. None of the camps have been started in District Mansehra & Abbottabad.

In Haripur, Sungi has been part of District Disaster Management Authority and Social Welfare Department in facilitating registration of IDPs. Need assessment has already been conducted & a plan has been chalked out to support the affectees.

In District Mardan Sungi has been part of coordination meetings with Commissioner to identify and support the most vulnerable groups among IDPs. In Swabi Sungi has regular meetings and coordination with ACO Swabi. This helps Sungi to focus those areas which were not supported by any other organization.

Sungi is regularly participating and contributing in provincial and local level coordination meetings including the relevant cluster meetings.

Sungi and along with other is Oxfam International partners had initiated a local level coordination mechanism and would proactively support this process. This would help avoiding duplication and exclusion on ground the organizations would learn from each other. This would also help Sungi and other organizations to ensure compliance of humanitarian standards and accountability and transparency on ground.

Disaster Management  Volunteers

Over the time Sungi trained and capacitated hundreds of men and women disaster management volunteers from its working area, who had also supported Sungi and a number of other organizations in earthquake response and subsequent disasters including support to IDPs in Mardan. These trained volunteers would be involved in relief assistance after another refresher training to them.  Sungi also welcomes new volunteers, but to ensure humanitarian principles and HAP guidelines, Sungi prefers to engage only those volunteers with appropriate skills, behaviors and respect of the affectees.  

  Sungi  ’ s communication Strategy to highlight advocacy issues of IDPs

Sungi has launched a media plan to facilitate IDPs and highlight advocacy issues of IDPs living in miserable condition.

Sungi is in the process of planning in

• Facilitation of communication for IDPs. 
• Psychological assistance and maintaining a hope. 
• Promoting an overall good image of the IDPs. 
• Providing them a platform to have their say. 
• Identifying their tangible and intangible needs. 
• Mobilizing people within the effected community to help each other. 
• Promoting tolerance in such a critical situation. 
• Many formats and tools are under consideration be used to achieve these targets, e.g. 
• Launching a help line with a daily program where concerns will be able to call and discuss their issues openly. 
• Experts and stake holders will be invited to those programs to discuss and recommend. 
• Public service messages will be on-aired repeatedly. 
• Awareness raising campaign to incorporate women concerns and needs during assessment, distribution and monitoring in the activities of relief and recovery. 

Following are the key issues to be addressed immediately:

The IDPs shall be treated as respected human beings who had left their homes to support the human kind and particularly the Pakistani nation. The government and all relief agencies are duty bearers and its is their duty to provide support to IDPs.

Camp management needs more attention. It is important to fulfill humanitarian standards and UNHCR and other expert organization shall move their international experts of camp management to support the concerned organizations in camp management. (Relief Camp Jaba for earthquake affecttees was one of the best managed camps, and similar efforts need to be done).   

The IDPs shall be provided with kitchen facilities so that the families could start cooking their own food. It would also help the families to come out of trauma.

The agencies shall also focus to support IDPs living outside camps, particularly with the host families. If these IDPs are not properly targeted their situation would further deteriorate.

 Ensuring Accountability and Transparency

Sungi being member of HAP International in Pakistan will ensure that all humanitarian activities are in accordance with the HAP Standards 2007. Sungi will put in place complaint handling mechanism through formation of Humanitarian Quality Management Committees (HQMC) consisting of affected communities and the host families. All host family IDPs would be beneficiaries in this project; but Sungi will give priority to most vulnerable families. After completion of assessment; these families would be further randomly verified to assess their eligibility. This verification process would be done through Sungi team and community activists whose capacities in relief assistance and disaster mitigation have been enhanced by Sungi. Distribution team would maximize their effort to deliver assistance package at the nearest point of vulnerable IDPs residing places. It is mandatory to ensure that all beneficiaries are well informed about distribution point, date and time. Women and people with functional limitation would be preferred for provision of relief assistance with ease at the time of distribution. Well organized and planned distribution practices would be adopted keeping in mind circumstances. Standard distribution list would be followed that can help later on for monitoring purposes. While execution of project activities, an emphasis would be made on better coordination mechanism with other humanitarian actors to extend number of services to host families and to avoid duplication efforts. Sungi ’ s local partners, Civil Society Organizations, Local Government Representatives support and cooperation will help out in smoothing project activities. All project interventions would be completed in three month ’ s period. Efforts would be made to keep the system transparent and participatory. IRC Code of Conduct and HAP principles would be adopted and strictly monitored from procurement to distribution process.

Banners will be displayed at distribution points having complete details/ contacts for complaint handling mechanism. Any complaints will be handled within 15 days.

Future Plans

Sungi is in the process planning to provide relief assistance for the vulnerable IDPs living with the host families and also requesting for supporting its programmes from individual and organizational donors.  At the moment Sungi had just initiated its  “ Cash for Choice ”  programme for 3000 affected families with the support of Oxgam Novib. Sungi is in process of designing projects with the support of CWS, CHF Canada, Oxfam International, and other agencies and individual donors to support IDPs living with host families in the areas of food, health and hygiene, water and sanitation, education, and livelihood, in Swabi, Mardan and Hazara targeting approximately 10,000 families.

 Sungi would keep you informed *