The latest story on the catastrophic flooding in Pakistan is about how it hasn’t been a story.
Compared to the response to the Haitian earthquake, media coverage of the Pakistan floods has been paltry. While news coverage isn’t correlated with need, it does have a major effect on the amount of disaster relief aid given. An article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy yesterday reported that eleven US charities had so far raised only $5 million for Pakistan flood relief, compared to $560 million raised by 39 US groups in the two and a half weeks after the Haiti earthquake.
The difference in initial death toll reports may be one obvious explanation. The early figures for Haiti were 200,000 lives taken, compared to the 1,600 people reported to have died so far in Pakistan. But less than ten percent of the variation in amount of TV news coverage given to foreign natural disasters can be explained by severity, according to one academic study.
The same study found that one third of the variation in how much TV attention a disaster gets is explained by how popular the affected country is with US tourists. Sadly for the flood survivors, Pakistan is nowhere on the list of top destinations for US travelers in Asia and the outlook’s not great: the World Economic Forum ranked Pakistan 113 out of 133 countries in its latest Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report.
If you think that popularity with holiday-makers is a fair way to allocate disaster relief, no problem. For the rest of you, accepting the status quo may not be so attractive. In Pakistan, estimates of people affected by the floods—who may have already lost their homes, their belongings or their livelihoods, and who now lack basic services—are at 20 million. UN officials have recently been predicting a “second wave of deaths” from water-borne diseases as the flooding continues and people remain without clean water, food and medicine. Children and the very poor are among the most vulnerable.
For individual donors wanting to help, some advice:
- Give to an established organization already on the ground and with experience working locally.
- Give cash, not goods. Pakistan is far away and shipping items there is expensive. With cash, organizations can buy what they need closer to the disaster site.
- Don’t earmark your donation, but give to an organization that you trust to allocate your money wisely.
Also check out this more comprehensive set of guidelines from Good Intentions Are Not Enough.
Ideas on where and how to give:
- One reader wrote in about perceptions that there are no Pakistani NGOs participating in the relief efforts, or that all of them are inherently corrupt. She countered that organizations such as the Edhi Foundation and Islamic Relief (which is an international NGO but has worked in Pakistan for many years) have solid reputations in Pakistan and abroad and have been effective in the past in getting aid to where it is most needed.
- Hillary Clinton announced last week that Americans can text the word “SWAT” to the number 50555 to donate $10 to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to provide tents, clothing, food, clean water and medicine to Pakistan.
- The Global Giving website has a list and description of their partner organizations working on flood relief.
- BRAC is the largest non-profit based in the developing world (it was launched in Bangladesh in 1972) and it is accepting donations through its US-based branch.
- Tonic and Interaction both have lists of organizations accepting donations for flood relief.
Feel free to add others in the comments.
20 Comments
I haven’t lived in the US for several years now, but I don’t recall that Haiti was real high on anyone’s list of “desirable tourist destinations.” I suspect the difference can be explained more by geography (Haiti’s proximity breeds empathy) and politics.
In the West, generally speaking, Pakistan is viewed unfavorably for a variety of reasons. Even within the region, the reputation of Pakistan’s government and people is very poor. That negative view must have an effect on people’s charitable impulses.
http://www.annaraccoon.com/politics/why-is-the-west-not-giving-to-pakistan-following-the-floods/
Come on…I don’t think “holiday making” is the only reason why people are not donating to Pakistan. Not saying I agree or disagree with the general population, just saying I think summing it up to holiday/not holiday destinations is a bit single minded.
Stephanie and Nathan,
No, I don’t think holiday making is the only reason either!
But consider the different factors that feed into people’s decisions about where to go on vacation, which would probably include many of the things you mention—geography, empathy, political and religious biases, perceptions of corruption, how much the people there are “like me,” how much I know about the history and cultural attractions, etc.
Some of those things are intangible and hard to measure, while travel preferences are demonstrated—they can be tracked and measured. So maybe we could think of holiday making as a proxy for those intangibles.
Outside of the US, in Ireland and the rest of the EU for example, the level of media coverage doesn’t seem to account for much of the variation in aid (in this case anyway, as media coverage has been quite high). Rather this being the second large scale natural disaster within one fiscal year (so donors don’t have the budgetary flexibility they had in the case of Haiti) and the comparatively low current death toll seem to be stronger factors. To a lesser extent, there were concerns about the risks of corruption, which the UNHCR have attempted to address through national news broadcasts. Also, I don’t know how fair it is to apply the results of that paper to US news now, which has a pretty bad rap internationally as it is, as the results were from 1976 when agencies were far less likely to have reporters in country – an earthquake in Italy therefore was much easier report on than one in Guatemala – which was given in the paper as the reason for the bias towards ‘tourist destinations.’ Nowadays there are probably more US reporters in Pakistan than there are in most other countries, so I don’t know if the bias would still stand. Interesting post. All the best, Fi
Individual donors in the Netherlands can easily give online at http://www.giro555.nl to a consortium of NGO’s, including Oxfam, UNICEF, Tear, etc.
A better example is the Asian Tsunami. Within like days of the event, the US and European natiosn sent their militaries in like no one has ever seen before. At least on carrier group and one amphibious assault group. No talk about the aid falling into the hands of the Jemaah Islamiyah. All because Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia are tourist attractions and US/Western citizens were affected.
Let us be frank, geography and distance don’t count, in a few days everyone was there after Tsunami with so much resources that later we discovered sadly that some was misused. Niether touristic reasons stand as an explanation.
Let us have the courage to say, Pakistan’s image in the western mind is overly described as a radical Muslim country or population that may have been hiding Osama. The impartiality and neutrality we claim; UNFORTUNATELY, failed the test this time.
Correlation does not equal causation, as others have noted. I get that the goal of the article is good: drum up support to help alleviate the suffering from a huge catastrophe. But when Aid Watch fails to live up to its own standard of rigor and honesty, and plays the game of sexing up important stories with spurious speculation to presumably get more attention, it hurts Aid Watch’s mission.
I think the floods in Pakistan are a poor example of the phenomenon described in the study for several reasons.
First, your complaint is that aid organizations raising money for the Pakistan floods have raised only 1% of the money raised for the Haiti earthquake. But as you say, the reported death toll in Pakistan is… well, only 1% of the early reported death toll in Haiti.
Second, Pakistan is the recipient of unusually large quantities of U.S. aid anyway. Anyone paying taxes is contributing to one of the biggest overall budgets for U.S. foreign aid.
Third, I imagine a lot of Americans have ambivalent feelings about Pakistan given their sometimes inconsistent behavior as our ally in Afghanistan. A lot of news reports I hear about Pakistan have a negative tone.
So there are other very plausible reasons why people might be giving less to aid groups working in Pakistan than they did to aid groups working in Haiti. I think lumping these floods in with the phenomenon described in the paper is premature.
As the mainstream media is increasing coverage of the flood, it is consistently mentioning Al Qaeda and the Taliban as part of the political context, which for many Americans strikes a nerve. Compounding this pr disaster is the news that Pakistan is clamping down on Islamist charities.
By combining the humanitarian disaster with political challenges, the media is reinforcing our perception of Pakistan as a complicated country. In our sound-bite world, without personal knowledge that comes from contact like tourism, it is challenging for donors to know how to appropriately respond to such a disaster to both have empathy towards the victims and perceive that you can help.
Thanks for these resources!
Trends.google.com provides a striking quantitative comparison of just how unreported the Pakistan floods have been. I suggest comparing in Haiti, Pakistan or earthquake, flood. Or you can use my link:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=earthquake%2C+flood&ctab=0&geo=all&date=2010&sort=0
The screen shot from GlobalGiving’s facebook page says a lot about this issue:
http://aidwatchers.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/lamebook_GG_pakistan_floods.jpg
US public perception of Pakistan being less worthy than Haiti of our attention is a big issue, even if it isn’t the majority viewpoint. (In all fairness – this comment came 2 weeks ago before the 20-million affected number was announced.)
Wow, how simplistic!
Could it be that a nation that has enough money to build a nuclear bomb and export terror to all over the world, be able to handle a disaster?
No, it has nothing to do with tourism. It has to do with the suspicion among Americans that Pakistanis and their government are supporting the Taliban, giving refuge to Al Qaida, and are generally anti-American. Pakistan and its people are shaping up to be no friend of the USA, so I’m afraid they’ll have to ask for money from other countries.
Humanitarian relief should not be given on the basis of death toll. The people who have been killed, as tragic as it is, do not need our assistance; it is the survivors who do. In the case of the floods, at least 1,600 people have been kiled so far, but that number is expected to rise due to waterborne illnesses. More importantly, 20 million people have been uprooted, left without shelter and in need of clean water and food. The loss of infrastructure, crops and livestock will take a very, very long time to recover from. THIS is why this crisis is much more severe than the earthquakes in Haiti and Pakistan and the tsunami in Southeast Asia COMBINED.
The tens of millions of people affected by these floods are not involved in the politics or terrorism that plagues Pakistan’s international reputation. They are the small scale farmers who for decades have kept the country fed and now need the world’s help to feed themselves and their children.
We simply must see past the politics and the media’s negative representation of the country, and give generously to a reputable organization.
I feel like this is a lot more straight forward than people are making it out to be.
Look at the disasters we’re comparing this to…
Haiti: Is right off of the coast of the US. You could swim there from Miami (if you were half dolphin). It was also an earthquake, earthquakes happen nearly instantaneously. Instantaneous tragedy gets a lot more of our attention no matter where it is. There’s a lot of information to be reported on quickly, people like that. They hate being strung along. That’s not interesting.
Tsunami: It was a TSUNAMI. Not only is it instantaneous, it’s exotic. It’s interesting. It’s unique. It’s entertaining (in a horrible way) to hear about.
When flooding occurs IN the United States, how much do people really pay attention? Flooding isn’t interesting. It’s slow. It doesn’t kill that many people (relatively).
Yes. Our perception of Pakistan is poor and that contributes to the problem. If this happened in England we’d get way more coverage. Yet if it happened in Argentina, or Chile… how much more coverage would it really get? I would argue: not a lot. A bit more, but not a lot.
If Pakistan had been hit by a meteor I assure you, the media would be all over it (exotic AND instantaneous). Their reputation doesn’t help, but the particular form of disaster is the biggest problem they face.
Surely it is up to the Muslim world to help their own people especially at this time of Ramadan. To me it looks as though despite everything happening to their own people these religious people prefer to spend their time fasting and contemplating their place in heaven. If they got off their backsides (or knees) and did something positive about it we would all feel more confident about giving but if they prefer to spend their time in the mosque followed by gargantuan feasts then why should the rest of us help?
Dear All,
We are a group of volunteers who are working to collect information on trustworthy and effective organizations on the ground and trying to disseminate that information to enable people in Pakistan and abroad to channel their help in the best possible manner in this time of crisis. The organizations have been identified through our own work experiences, friends and colleagues and we have tried to contact many of the organization to collect updated information. We are NOT collecting funds ourselves or receiving any money and this solely to provide information to the public to make the mobilization of funds and resources more effective. We felt among our family and friends that many people wanting to help did not know how to best make a contribution and we believe this website will help others in making contributions.
Please visit our website at http://pakistanifloodrelief.wordpress.com/
I think that this is a major humanitarian disaster and politicking may not be totally appropriate. In terms of the actual facts onground, despite the flashing headlines, it must be noted that Pakistan has lost more of its soldiers and civilians post 9/11 primarily because it has been siding with the west in the war. Afghanistan is land locked and over 90 percent of the supplies for the Nato troops has been passing through Pakistan. Nato also has air base within Pakistan and carries out joint operation with the Pakistani military. Though it is true that there has been some history where both U.S. and Pakistan have supported taliban at various times, that no longer is the case as per the official state department and US military commanders statements. And certainly Pakistan has never supported Al Qaeda, the organization that is believed to be responsible for 9/11. This is just a clarification to some comments that have been made here.
FOCUS Humanitarian Assistance-Pakistan is an affiliate of Aga Khan Development Network http://www.akdn.org/focus.asp
Focus Humanitarian Assistance, Pakistan(FOCUS-P) is one of the largest NGO in Pakistan working in sector of disaster mitigation and management and a recipient of UN Sasakawa Award of Certificate of Merit for Disaster Risk Reduction and Presidential award Sitara-e-Essar for outstanding work done in disaster response during 2005Earthquake. In addition, FOCUS has over a decade’s expertise in fostering disaster-resilient communities and developing methods and training for disaster risk management, from natural hazard risk assessment to mitigation and preparedness in some of the world’s most challenging terrain. They are doing excellent work during this flood disaster.
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