ABU DHABI // Relief efforts for two million internally displaced Pakistanis are to be bolstered by what has been hailed as the UN refugee agency's biggest partnership in the Arab world for three decades. Saado Quol, a senior adviser to the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and head of the agency's office in Abu Dhabi, also said the agreement signed yesterday with the UAE was one of its biggest ever in the region.
The displaced Pakistanis, in North West Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, will be provided with relief items including blankets and tents, and eventually repatriated, through an accord signed in the capital yesterday by representatives of the Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan Foundation and the UNHCR. Panos Moumtzis, the head of resource mobilisation at the UNHCR, who was in Abu Dhabi for the signing, said: "It is a very significant and huge partnership, which aims to reach two million people."
Mr Quol added that the agreement marked the largest single global contribution to the UNHCR project in Pakistan this year. Mohammed al Khoori, the executive director of the foundation, said the partnership would embrace all two million people, mainly women and children, displaced in the two areas. "They are human beings and where we see a need we have to give support." Work will begin immediately owing to the gravity of the situation, which the UN agency describes as the most complex mass movement it has dealt with in years.
Mr Quol said the agreement was in two parts - direct relief to the displaced people, and their eventual voluntary repatriation. The project is for an initial year. "This agreement will impact the people tremendously," he said. "We simply do not have enough partners and this is the fastest and largest internal displacement that has happened in recent history." Millions of people have sought refuge from the conflict between Pakistan's army and Taliban rebels in the north-west of the country.
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