Azra Talat Sayeed/APWLD member
ROOTS for Equity, Pakistan

Women in tents: cooking area is a typical problem in disaster situtaions Photo: Roots for Equity

A massive earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale hit a vast area in South Asia on October 8, 2005. Although there were casualties in areas outside Pakistan, the major catastrophe was felt in northern areas of Pakistan and Azad Kashmir. It is now nearly two and half months since the massive Earthquake which hit Pakistan, Azad Kashmir, India, China and Afghanistan. However, the greatest suffering was faced by the people of North Western Frontier Province (NWFP) in Pakistan and Azad Kashmir, an area administered by the Government of Pakistan. Based on the latest figures nearly 4 million people in Pakistan and Azad Kashmir have been affected; 78,000 dead, 70,000 injured, 3.5 million homeless and an estimated 10,000 children orphaned.

Mountainous Terrain Hampers Accessibility of Relief Efforts

The terrain of the earthquake affected areas in Pakistan and Azad Kashmir is mostly high mountains with people living at very high altitudes or down in valleys, either way it means climbing up or down on very treacherous paths to reach affected communities. From the beginning the relief work has been further affected by the feeling of acute shortage of time with the coming winter. Currently, most of Azad Kashmir and North Western Frontier Province is under snow with some communities cut off from cities making relief efforts difficult to implement. 

In a country like Pakistan, where women, in general, are largely absent from public life, especially in positions of leadership, the issue of women’s access to relief efforts is much more dire in rural and remote areas. The lack of women in the relief effort teams had vastly impacted the direction of relief work, as would be expected. The few women involved in the relief operations are feeling this gap immensely, as fewer women –survivors of the earthquake are being reached directly. In the mountainous terrain it takes a whole day to just reach one or two villages. Communities even in one village are scattered and not easily accessible.

Women in the Earthquake Affected Areas

In NWFP and Azad Kashmir, the general impression is that more women and children have died. Roots for Equity, a non-governmental organisation involved in relief operations, reports that in nearly every village, where it had provided help, women, children and the elderly have been the primary casualties. Only in one village of Azad Kashmir, out of 16 dead, two were boys and one elderly man, the rest were eight girls and five women. The Earthquake happened in the morning, 8:52 am to be precise. Many women in the rural areas had left home to go cut grass as fodder for their animals. Many of them died as a result of rocks and boulders falling on them. However, for urban areas a different set of patriarchal rules apply; there are reports which suggest that many women would not easily leave the shelter of their homes due to cultural norms of purdah. “In certain areas of NWFP, women would have never fled to the relative safety of streets in any case, despite the violent shaking of buildings and concrete walls tumbling down and trapping them inside.”

Both NWFP and Azad Kashmir are regions where migrant male labor is a norm due to underdevelopment and lack of job opportunities which had increased numbers of women-headed households. According to a report prepared by the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, women-headed households in Azad Kashmir were nearly 20%, and the Earthquake has created another category of households now led by widows.

Relief Distribution

A relief team crossing a river on a “hanging” bridge to get to a remote community affected by the earthquake Photo: Roots for Equity

The government has pledged monetary compensation to those whose houses were destroyed; One hundred thousand rupees (approximately USD$1700) were promised to those who have lost a household member. There is much irony associated with this money when it comes to women. For instance, an old woman lost her son who was the only earning household member; in this case her daughter-in-law had gone back to her own parents and taken her children as well as the $1,700 given by the government leaving the old woman on her own with the caretaker of her old age gone.

On the other hand, our team met a young widow of about 27-29 years in a community where relief had been provided. Her father-in-law had received the $1,700 and had not given any share of the money to her. In a patriarchal culture, there is little chance of another marriage for her, and she may, in the end, spend her entire life serving her in-laws till her son is able to take care of her.

There were long lines of men waiting for distribution of food, clothing and tents. These male-dominated lines could also be seen at the medical camps. The Pakistan Government assistance was distributed by the Pakistan Army, not a very friendly group to deal with in the best of times. Even in the NGO sector, there were few women involved in the relief operations. In one UN camp a smattering of women could be seen, with only one Pakistani woman at hand.

The meager presence of women queuing in the lines for food and other relief material was testimony to the fact that women were finding it difficult to join these groups. Although the case was somewhat different for Kashmir, for NWFP only the most desperate of women were joining the lines. A vast majority of women-headed households have been left out of the distribution net. This is especially true of NWFP, where there is an intensely conservative patriarchal culture.

Women in Tent Villages

In the aftermath of the Earthquake, thousands of tent villages have been set up in the quake-affected areas as well as in Rawalpindi and Islamabad, cities over 100 kilometers away from the main affected areas.

The tents in the relief camps are close to each other, barely providing any privacy to the residents. Many people have said that they were not moving their families to the tent villages due to lack of privacy for women. For girls, there is no privacy or sense of security when they come out of their own tent. It has to be kept in mind that these girls and women belong to a culture where they have never in their lives come in front of strange men. Some newspaper articles mention that some families are resolved to get their young daughters married as soon as possible.

With rain and snow falling women have no dry space to cook. This issue had been identified by the women relief teams, and in one village, women had especially asked for tin sheets to put up a wall-less kitchens so that they could have dry space for cooking, out of rain and snow.

There have been constant rumours about the presence of sex traffickers in the earthquake affected region. In the early days after the Earthquake there were reports of female patients disappearing from medical camps. The government of Pakistan had immediately put a stop to the adoption of orphaned children, or displaced children with no adults accompanying them to prevent girls falling prey to sex trafficking groups.

Women’s Access to Health Facilities

Women in a culture such as Pakistan are not used to talking with strangers, and this has caused many hurdles in getting them needed help, medical and other wise. They are shy to come forward with their problems, and medical aid givers have had to make special efforts to reach women. In camps, where there was lack of women health care workers, women by and large have not accessed medical care. Roots for Equity had set up a medical camp with female paramedical staff nearly two weeks after the calamity, and had a constant flow of female patients, to the extent that many kept coming to the camp late at night. On house-to-house rounds, it was found that many women had not even received a first time help as yet. The reasons for not accessing medical assistance had been predominantly the absence of female health workers in their community with the terrain factor multiplying the difficulties of getting them to a medical camp.

The wash rooms provided at the tent villages are considered inadequate and women are reported going back to the damaged buildings or nearby open areas rather than using the camp facilities. There are reports that women had not taken a bath even after a month of delivering a child. The United Nations had estimated that over 40,000 women in the quake hit region were pregnant. Their physical and emotional state of health was directly affected; the issue of lack of sanitation for these women is just one facet of the enormous difficulties faced by them.

Women in Communities

The community generally takes care of the families where there are only women. Generally these women rely on children or males from other households to bring their daily necessities such as vegetables and other goods. With the destruction of communities and people migrating to other areas, many of these women have been left alone with nobody to rely on. They are especially vulnerable because of their inability to access relief teams. In the early days after the Earthquake tents distributed by the Pakistan Army and other relief agencies were the most wanted item. Women-headed households have been left out of this delivery system as they did not venture out of their community. In remote areas, where tents were dropped from helicopters, only the strong could run on the treacherous mountainside to catch these tents. The fittest and the strongest were able to access these tents and other relief goods, including food items, leaving women and the elderly out.

Even for relief groups who were targeting women for assistance there were many questions at stake. Roots for Equity had developed a system for providing help to women: first, widows with children, then orphan-headed households and lastly single women. Women had to come for the relief goods themselves so that it could be ascertained that women received the goods. However, this in itself raises certain questions. For instance, given the mountainous terrain it was difficult to reach each household, as they were scattered over the mountains. Older women, women with disabilities or injured women have been left out of the relief efforts even when women relief teams have been delivering assistance to women -survivors.

Loss of livelihood sources

According to the International Labor Organisation, there has been a loss of 1.1 million jobs, as a result of the earthquake. There has been a heavy loss of livestock and agricultural implements that constitute capital assets of rural communities. According to reports, 250,000 animals were killed in the earthquake. The loss of livestock for women means a loss of a source of livelihood as well as nutrition. There are reports of sales of animals as people are unable to look after their animals in the face of such massive loss of human life, lack of shelter for humans as well as animals, and lack of fodder. The loss of livestock is further exacerbated by “forced” sales of livestock due to lack of fodder and shelter for animals.

The Earthquake lasted eight minutes but the survivors, particularly women, will feel its impacts for many years to come. There is an urgent need to address these issues and to develop and implement systems which would allow women to start rebuilding their lives.