The agency has so far distributed 300 tents in Charsadda district of Khyber Pakhtoonkhwah and is also providing technical assistance to the shelter cluster for developing a viable shelter model. With the financial assistance from the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) shelter and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) projects are being rolled out in the affected areas.
The floods began in July 2010 after heavy monsoon rains affected the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, lower Punjab as well as parts of Balochistan. It is estimated that two thousand people have perished and close to a million homes destroyed so far.
Official United Nations estimates show that over 20 million people are suffering and homeless with over 160,000 square kilometres affected as a result of the flooding, exceeding the combined total of the affected of 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
In responding to the floods, UN-HABITAT has setup offices in the provinces of Gilgit Baltistan, Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtoonkhwah and Azad Kashmir.
UN-HABITAT is currently conducting assessments in the five provinces of Pakistan and in Azad Kashmir to gather technical qualitative information on housing and settlement. The objective of this survey is to find out land and settlement issues, community preferences, reconstruction plans, housing types and cost, local knowledge and availability of skills.
Assessment teams will also be looking at building performance and reviewing good and bad practices in construction. They will also collect information on different damage types and patterns and share this information with relevant clusters and partners.
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