The UN’s special session to raise funds for flooded Pakistan appears to have met its $460 million target.

After an appallingly slow initial response, the conscience of the world has finally been pricked. For that Pakistan will be certainly grateful. But for all the generosity, $460 million is a drop in the ocean compared to what is needed -- both short term and long term.
Twenty million people are affected, a fifth of Pakistan is flooded. That is larger than the size of many countries. Tens of thousands of villages are under water, infrastructure has been washed way, thousands of hectares of crops have been destroyed, livestock drowned -- and while the floodwaters appear to be receding two further disasters loom in the form of a food crisis and cholera. Four hundred and sixty million dollars is unlikely to cover even the immediate costs of shelter, food, clean water and health care for all those affected. It works out at $23 a head.
As has been pointed out by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and others, more people have been affected in the Pakistan floods than in the Indian Ocean tsunami, the Kashmir earthquake, Burma’s Cyclone Nargis and the earthquake in Haiti combined. The world gave almost $7 billion in aid following the tsunami. Within days of the Haiti earthquake, the American public alone raised $528 million in relief aid and if all the pledges are honored, $10 billion will be given. But so far just $460 million for Pakistan. The world cannot sit on its laurels after Thursday’s UN special session congratulating itself on a job well done. It has only just begun. The cost of rebuilding Pakistan and Pakistanis’ lives is going to run into billions, if not tens of billions -- and the world has to be generous. Pakistan cannot raise that sort of money by itself.
Unfortunately, something of a mental block seems to have developed in many parts of the world when it comes to giving to Pakistan. It was not there five years ago after the Kashmir earthquake. The world responded generously to that. Today, however, allegations of corruption or support for the Taliban are being used as justification for not giving. That is immoral. Perceptions about corruption must not be used as an excuse not to help. It is the ordinary people of Pakistan, many of them among the poorest in the world, who are suffering. Do they have to die in their tens of thousands from starvation and disease before people dig into their pockets? Perhaps that is the problem. Haiti did not exactly have an image of good governance but there 220,000 people died.
If it is the case that world has been insufficiently moved by the worst disaster in Pakistan’s history, that is shocking. Millions of people there are desperate for help that can come only from elsewhere. Thousands certainly will die if that help is not forthcoming.
Obviously assurances are needed that funds go direct to where they are needed but the UN agencies and the NGOs operating in Pakistan can provide them. There is no excuse not to give