XUNICEF News and Views

Title: Pakistan and Afghanistan: a call for health diplomacy and restraint Author: Zulfiqar A Bhutta, Fawad Akbari, Shabina Raza, Suraya Dalil Publication: The Lancet Date: June 19, 2026

Where beauty means resilience Minar Thapa Magar, Home Ground Lab Click here for the article Summary When the 2022 floods swept through Deh Kamangar in Pakistan’s Sindh province, not only were homes destroyed but aspirations were washed away.

Greetings from Islamabad.  A selected group of retirees, both national and international,  recently met with the new UNICEF Representative, Pernille Ironside, at my place. It was a most engaging meeting with an exchange of experience by the retirees in their various assignments with Unicef and also of life after Unicef.   with issues and activities they are currently engaged in.  Pernille shared information about the current changes in Unicef globally, in the region and at the country level and the recent strategic shift in programs to deal with the current challenges.  We discussed various ways in which the retirees could support the current staff and office as they navigate these turbulent times all in all a very enjoyable, engaging, experience. We plan to continue our engagement thanks to the keen interest of the new Rep Sharing for XUNICEF News and Views. With thanks and warm regards Shahida

Shared by Niloufar Pourzand This first episode is part of a new series entitled The Fading Causes Podcast that I host with collaborators at Impact Newswire. That schedules releasing an episode every fortnight or so. Please follow/subscribe if interested. Watch below via Youtube or on Spotify or where-ever you get podcasts. Also via my own website, in due course.   Mukesh

Instagram post shared by Niloufar Pourzand View this post on Instagram A post shared by KabulNow (@kabulnow.af)

Article shared by Niloufar Pourzand and Kul Gautam Powerful message by @Malala @MalalaFund  to the world's Muslim leaders not to condone weaponizing of Islam against girls and women's education, dignity & existence itself as in Afghanistan under Taliban and elsewhere. Kul

Article shared by Ken Gibbs Editor's Note: Ken Gibbs writes below concerning the recent bombings in Quetta and the reactions shared by him and a former Dutch JPO to the news from Quetta and from Amsterdam about the attacks that took place there on both Israeli and pro-Palestinian fans.

  As part of their activities for Staff Association Week, the UNICEF Pakistan Staff Association invited retirees to an Eid party. Over a dozen turned up. Each one of us got a bouquet and we briefly talked about our UNICEF lives. I was asked to facilitate as the current staff had never met most of the other retirees. We also had a meeting to discuss some possibilities for future collaboration. Sharing some pictures of this memorable event. Zeba

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, IOM, the UN Migration Agency and UNICEF, the UN Children’s Fund, are deeply concerned for the safety and well-being of children and families affected by the ‘Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan ’ and alarmed at the potential consequences of this plan’s implementation. The majority are Afghans now returning out of fear of arrest or deportation in Pakistan. Afghanistan is deep in the grips of a humanitarian crisis, with ongoing human rights challenges and an impeding harsh winter. Almost 30 million people require humanitarian assistance and 3.3 million are internally displaced. Since September 15, 2023, an estimated 160,000 Afghans have left Pakistan. Among those, 86 percent of families reported fear of arrest as the most common reason for leaving the overwhelming majority departing in a rush, and without assistance. Pakistan has a proud tradition of hosting refugees, saving millions of lives. This generosity is still needed. Although the Government of Pa...

Click here for the original article A prominent rights group in Pakistan has expressed “considerable alarm” over the state of religious freedom in the country. The HRCP report focuses on forced conversions, desecration of places of worship and marginalisation of the Ahmadi community. In its report titled A Breach of Faith: Freedom of Religion or Belief in 2021-22 released on Tuesday, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said incidents of the country’s religious minorities facing persecution remained consistent between July 2021 and June 2022. The HRCP report focused on forced conversions, the desecration of places of worship belonging to minorities and the marginalisation of the Ahmadi community . It also questioned the standardised national curriculum in parts of Pakistan, which the group said has created an “exclusionary narrative that sidelines Pakistan’s religious minorities”. The report said that in the year 2021 alone, “around 60 cases of forced conversion were reported...

“The rains have ended; and sadly, to a great degree, so has media attention. And yet 4 million children fight for survival near contaminated and stagnant flood waters. With homes destroyed, they are suffering a bitter winter, without decent shelter. You will have all seen the images that tell this heartbreaking story: villages turned into islands; children turned into orphans; families still living under scraps of plastic in literally freezing conditions. The numbers also tell a story – the story of an ongoing nightmare for the children of Pakistan. In the flood-affected districts, about 1.6 million children were already suffering from severe acute malnutrition, while another six million children suffer from stunting, a condition that can cause irreversible damage to children’s brains, bodies and immune systems. Post floods, UNICEF expects this situation to have worsened exponentially. Twenty-seven thousand schools have been washed away. And despite the ongoing tragedy, despite all the...

Lagan Khar, Pakistan Thomson Reuters Foundation When flooding devastated north-west Pakistan in late August, eight-year-old Sinain Bibi lost out on about two months of education after half of her school building was swept away, along with the wooden bridge that connected her village with the school. Bibi must now embark on a treacherous trek each day to attend a makeshift school, held in a tent on a riverbank in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. She is worried about the class time she has missed and said it would take her a while to catch up. "The calamity has seriously disturbed my studies as I couldn't learn a single lesson since my school was closed," Bibi said outside the temporary school in the village of Lagan Khar village, in Swat district. "I've even forgotten those lessons which I had learned before my school was shut down," she said. Sinain Bibi reads at a makeshift school in a village in Swat district in Pakistan’s northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province...

Anthropologist, Maira Hayat, in this article argues that Pakistan's recent floods are too often put down to "mismanagement, dysfunction, and disorder." Instead, she argues that the history of the country's water infrastructure shows the impact of long colonial rule and post-Independence interference by massive 'development aid' by the US, the World Bank and other players. These factors worsened inequality and poverty in rural areas. The impacts of climate change may only be now beginning to show up in disasters like the recent floods. The responses, she believes, should go beyond the calls for 'climate reparations' and more massive inputs of foreign-led engineering. Instead, a careful look into how water investments will either lessen or worsen the already existing inequalities of the country's rural population. Click here for the article - A history of US interference worsened Pakistan's devastating floods

Pakistan has been inundated with near continuous monsoon rainfall, flash flooding, and rain-induced landslides since mid-June, causing widespread devastation and casualties affecting millions of people across the South Asian country. Upon his arrival, Mr. Guterres was briefed on the latest developments and the Pakistan-led response by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, as well as other senior members of the Government. His two-day visit to the country is not only about solidarity, as he stressed during his various meetings today, “it is [also] a matter of justice”. “My heart goes out to everyone who has lost loved ones in this tragedy, and all those who have been affected by the loss of their homes, their businesses and their livelihoods” he told journalists in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, in a joint press conference alongside Minister of Foreign Affairs Zardari. Secretary-General António Guterres (right, back to camera) along with Prime Mini...

Dear friends, Here is an article for the newsletter on the devastating floods in Pakistan. kind regards from IslamabadZeba. A weird weather pattern was experienced in Pakistan in March 2022. There was no spring. Annual rose and jasmine flower shows were not held. After an intense winter, temperatures began to rise and by April in many parts of the country full-fledged summer had already set in. Weather pundits and the Met department began to predict heavy rainfall and flooding and warnings of GLOF (glacial lake outburst flooding) were being issued by the Climate Ministry. However, this came in the midst of government change, inflation and political rallies, and the poor and vulnerable population groups living in fragile and remote settings were a forgotten lot. Heavy rainfall became an everyday phenomenon in the South of the country. Karachi, the commercial hub was badly affected, deaths occurred, roads were damaged and scarce government resources were mobilized to address consequences...

Thank you Fouad. Your words of support mean a lot in the life altering situation in Pakistan. Sharing an article that touched my heart just now (its Friday morning here) kind regards Zeba This aerial photograph taken on September 1, 2022, shows flood-affected people taking refuge in tents after heavy monsoon rains in Dera Allah Yar town of Jaffarabad district, Balochistan province. — AFP KARIM BAKHSH: The southern Pakistan village of Karim Bakhsh is almost entirely under muddy water after catastrophic monsoon rains — hardly any stable buildings are left for shelter, the wheat silos are empty and venomous snakes are a constant threat. But unlike the tens of thousands of people who have fled their flooded homes, villages and towns across the country, several families here have refused to leave. Without formal property deeds, many residents are worried that if they take off, opportunists will seize their land, where their families have lived for generations. "We had ownership papers ...

🇵🇰 #Pakistan is facing an enormous calamity. More than 33 million people are impacted. @UNICEF_Pakistan and partners have started distributing safe water, medical supplies, vaccines, nutritional supplements... But much more is urgently needed to protect children and save lives. pic.twitter.com/A3ndsK2kDO — Abdullah A. Fadil (@AbdullahAFadil) August 30, 2022 A mother and her children tell @AbdullahAFadil , UNICEF Representative in Pakistan, and Wassaf Kakakhel, UNICEF WASH Officer, about their need for urgent assistance during a @UNICEF distribution of humanitarian supplies to families displaced by #floods in #Nowshera . pic.twitter.com/7W6ixpwF44 — UNICEF Pakistan (@UNICEF_Pakistan) August 31, 2022 Follow UNICEF in Pakistan on Twitter -  @UNICEF_Pakistan   ReliefWeb © UNICEF/UN0691097/Sami Malik More than three million children at risk as devastating floods hit Pakistan ISLAMABAD, 31 August 2022 – More than three million children are in need of humanitarian assistance ...

(AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad) ( / AP) IBFAN Pakistan supports the Ministry of Health’s Call to Action to Ensure safer Infant and Young Child Feeding in Emergencies. Click HERE for Pakistan Ministry of Health IYCF-E Statement Following Pakistan’s unprecedented Monsoon flooding, IBFAN Pakistan is urging solidarity in supporting the call from Pakistan’s Ministry of Health for appropriate IYCF-E infant and young child feeding in emergencies. In order to avoid unnecessary disease outbreaks and deaths of children, the protection, promotion and support of breastfeeding and appropriate complementary feeding is critical. The agencies are warning that donations of unnecessary ultra-processed products, including formula, should not be distributed to vulnerable communities. During emergencies, disease and death rates among children under five are higher than for any other age group. The younger the infant, the higher the risk of death. Babies are at great risk of water-related diseases, with diarrh...

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