Nepal earthquake: international response ‘disappointing’

Monsoon season begins in Nepal next month and the heavy rains are likely to further complicate efforts to get aid to people in remote parts of the country – triggering landslides and blocking roads.

Jamie McGoldrick, UN resident coordinator in Nepal, warned that there is only a small window before the monsoon rains hit to get relief supplies to people in remote locations.

But, he says, the response from the international community is also hampering relief efforts.

“I am disappointed in the sense that there was such an impressive response in terms of search and rescue – all the teams that came in to do the work, they did very impressively and comprehensively – and maybe they think that’s the job done,” he said.

“The talk now is about reconstruction, but we are trying to remind people that in between search and rescue and recovery, there is a phase called relief and we can’t forget that.”

A fraction of funds

The UN appealed to the international community for $423m (£273m) to be able to provide up to two million survivors with basic relief such as tents or tarpaulin sheets, dry food rations, safe drinking water and toilets for the next three months.

However, as of Monday, the UN Financial Tracking System shows just $92.4m (£59.7m) has been raised – a fifth of the required funds.

Mr McGoldrick said the slow response was partly due to donor fatigue where governments were being torn between competing humanitarian crises across the world such as the civil conflict in Syria or in Yemen.

But the UN says some 1.9m people are in immediate need of food assistance and 1.5m require sanitation and hygiene support. Unicef has warned that those affected by the earthquake are now at risk from a growing outbreak of waterborne diseases.

Around 315,000 people in Nepal’s most affected districts are in areas inaccessible by road and 75,000 cannot be reached even by air. Elite climbers have been deployed to try and get aid to those in the most remote places.

The UN and humanitarian partners are also trying to provide shelters for 350,000 people whose homes were destroyed. Many people in Nepal have taken to sleeping outside, even if their homes were not destroyed, for fear of aftershocks such as the 7.3 magnitude quake tremor that hit on 12 May.

But it is not just about the numbers. On Monday hundreds of people gathered in the Nepalese capital Kathmandu for a vigil to remember the victims of the earthquake (see video, top).

Liz Satow, director of World Vision in Nepal, said: “What we wanted to do tonight was to move away from the numbers and spend time just dwelling on the individuals, each of those who have died.”