GENEVA, JANUARY 9 – Pakistan said Monday it had received pledges of more than $9 billion at an international conference seeking support for its recovery from last year’s devastating floods — a billion more than requested. “The message from the world is clear: the world will stand by those who go through any natural calamities and will not leave them alone,” Hina Rabbani Khar, Pakistan’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, told a conference in Geneva.
The International Conference on Climate Resilient Pakistan organized by the Government of Pakistan and co-hosted by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), with the aim of mobilizing international financial and technical resources to ‘’build back better’’ after the devastating floods that hit the country last summer. More than 33 million people were affected by the flooding in Sindh and Balochistan, which is widely regarded to have been Pakistan’s greatest climate disaster.
The Permanent Representative of Italy to the United Nations in Geneva, Ambassador Gian Lorenzo Cornado, recalled the importance to intervene promptly after a disaster strikes to alleviate the people’s suffering, as well as the need to invest in prevention and in longer-term structural responses. He highlighted how, bearing in mind these two goals, Italy and Pakistan have developed a fruitful cooperation for more than forty years, focusing especially on poverty reduction, on rural development, health and environmental sustainability.
Ambassador Cornado also underlined how Italy will keep supporting Pakistan in the future, sparing no efforts to help the Country to “build back better”, reducing the likelihood of these tragic events and their devastating consequences. He therefore welcomed the adoption of the Reconstruction, Rehabilitation, Recovery and Resilience Framework (4RF), a tool that will significantly help the coordination and effective action of all the actors involved in Pakistan’s resilience and development.
Finally, Ambassador Cornado announced that Italy would allocate 23 million euros, in grants and concessional loans, to help Pakistan facing the current dramatic challenges derived from the recent floods. Those additional resources will top up the first 57 million euros loan already allocated since 2010 for reconstruction efforts in the Country and the second 20.5 million euros concessional loan just entered into force focused on the sustainable agriculture sector.
Read the full statement here.(@OnuItalia)
