On 24-26 May 2006, the members of the APWLD Women and Environment (WEN) Task Force went to Muzzafarabad, capital of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) for the Asian Women's Solidarity Visit to the communities affected by the October 2005 earthquake. APWLD members from Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Burma, Cambodia and Mongolia met for a dialogue with over 70 women from the Hatian Bala camp. The visit was organized by Roots for Equity, the Pakistan member of the APWLD WEN TF.

Sadia (far right) and her family inside their tent

Sadia lives with her mother and father, a sister, three brothers, and a grandfather. Her family of 8 is one of the 141 joint families who are living in these 4-person tents since October 2005, when the strong quake measuring 7.6 on the Richter Scale hit South Asia. She lost her older sister, and everything else they had, when the whole mountain at the Neelum Valley in Muzzafarabad came crashing down, burying their house. There were other 700 residents in those villages buried alive.Muzzafarabad, the capital of Azad, Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), is one of the worst hit areas, along with the Pakistan's North West Frontier Province

(NWFP). The October 2005 earthquake claimed the lives of 75,000 people and left 3.5 million people homeless.

As international aid came pouring in, and reconstruction started, the Pakistan government has ordered that relief camps be closed and people be moved back to their villages. It was reported that more than 125,000 people have left the relief camps since March this year. There are over 67,000 displaced survivors still living in some 59 camps in Pakistan Occupied Territory Kashmir and NWFP.

In an August 2006 news report, Mr. Altaf Saleem, chair of Pakistan Earthquake Recovery Committee was quoted as saying, "To keep people from becoming dependent on handouts, Pakistan's government ordered all free food distribution stopped last month, except to those widowed or maimed in the quake. The government promised money to build small homes, but not until after people have returned." Saleem further said, "We have to take people back to their own place. If we linger on too long unnecessarily in the tents, there's the tendency to get used to easy supply of food, and this can create problems in the future."

Sadia and her family are among those survivors who remained in Hatian Bala tent village, for more than 10 months now. Because where will they return? And what will they return to? Their village is now submerged in the lake that came about, when the mountain crashed and blocked water channels. There is no land to build their houses on, and nothing to plant or grow anything on. Their area is classified as "red zone" which means highly vulnerable to more earthquakes.

If Mr. Saleem can actually see the condition of the tent and the tent village as a whole that Sadia and her family are in, would he actually say that they would prefer to stay there for an "easy supply of food"?

On that 43? Celsius mid-day in May, I went in Sadia's tent thinking it would be refuge from the heat outside. But it was like an oven inside, as the tents were winterized in January. The international concern in December 2005 was that the usual harsh winter in Kashmir would cause deaths among the homeless, thus, all the distributed tents, clothes and blankets were for winter. Winter came and winter went, they were still using thick and warm tents and clothes. The women's clothes, shalwar kameeze, were all stitched with winter cloths.

"When we lie at night, we just wait for the light to come, then we come out for air. It is hell inside," said a woman in our dialogue. She is a mother living in a tent with her four children, her husband and her ailing fatherin- law. She lost two children in the earthquake. "I would constantly look around as snakes and scorpions would come at night, under our tents. I really long for our house in the mountains."

When we stayed at the camp for the night, the men would sleep outside, while it is not generally acceptable for women and girl-children to do so. For food, the men would go out for daily wage labour, when and if available. The free supply of food in that camp has stopped long time back. Traditionally, as men would migrate for wage labour, women would be responsible for the agriculture, livestock and forestry products. All of these are destroyed; livestock perished in the earthquake. The remaining forests are now under threat for the reconstruction work that is happening all over. Women are now left with nothing.

For water, the girls have to travel up and down mountains daily to fetch for the family. Nasreen, 10 years old, was telling us how her day looks like. She would fetch water early in the morning, then prepare breakfast with whatever they have for her two sisters, a brother, a sick grandpa and her father. Her mother died in the earthquake. After that, she cleans up their tent, washes clothes where the source of water is. She then comes back to prepare lunch, if any. She takes care of her sick grandpa, and her younger siblings. Nasreen is the eldest among the children. At 10 years old, she is practically running the household.

Sadia (far right) and her family inside their tent

"In our villages before, we would have our own source of water, and we wouldn't go across someone else's. Every woman and girl using that source would know each other, as well as the men who we would come across with. But now, we come from different villages, and we are using someone else's water source. So, we meet unknown men and boys along the way. They are the one who constantly tease us," says Nasreen. "That annoys and scares me at the same time." Fostering a climate of dependence has been expressed as a major concern of the government as well

The government and international agencies promised seeds and farm tools for the families. But for them, what they need is land. "Give us land. Then anything is possible," said another woman in the dialogue.

Settlement Plans
The Pakistan Earthquake Relief and Reconstruction Authority (ERRA) has been tasked to develop and finalise a settlement plan for the homeless. To date, ERRA has yet to fulfill its task. . Even when it does, the urgent concern of women activists in Pakistan who are involved in the reconstruction work is whether women would benefit from it. These concerns were articulated in the statement which was issued by the team who conducted the Asian Women Solidarity Visit to Kashmir in May.

"We are seriously concerned that the women survivors will not be able to benefit from this settlement plan, as they have been marginalised from most of the relief operations. As there were very few women social workers, it was difficult for the women to articulate their needs - water source in a safe and accessible place as the women and girl-children are the ones who fetch water for the family; personal needs such as fabric for their clothes, and related needs for lactating mothers, menstruating women, and other reproductive health needs. Most of these families have no bank accounts, and even for those who had, these accounts are in the names of the men of the house. For those who have lost their husbands and fathers, they have no means to access relief money and compensation; only male heads of the household are recognised. This is the same issue with land ownership - lands are only named to men. With these structural impediments, how then the surviving women can actually take the steps to recovery and reconstruction of their lives and the other lives which were put in their care - ailing father-in-law, injured mother, children? Women and their role in the joint family care must be recognised and supported. Their rights to have access to resources that would improve their lives must be upheld." The climate of dependence on women's work and care has long been fostered, among the men in the community, and the government itself; with no compensation, let alone recognition of women's work and care. What, I wonder, is the grand plan of Mr. Saleem and the international aid agencies about this? The Solidarity Visit team has recommendations for the governments of AJK and Pakistan - register land in the name of women; facilitate the opening of bank accounts in the name of women affected by the earthquake; and facilitate women's registration of their own identification card to allow them access to compensation and other development packages.


Survival
Meanwhile, Sadia's mother has an immediate survival strategy - marry off Sadia. At thirteen, Sadia has been arranged to marry a 17 year old boy. It was a whirlwind arrangement - after the earthquake. The mother explained that given the difficulty of their situation now, this is the right moment to marry Sadia off. The mother herself had an arranged marriage with Sadia's father at 16. While her mother was telling us this, Sadia was just smiling at us. "Are you happy to be living somewhere else, somewhere more comfortable?" I asked Sadia. The mother answered, "Happiness is not something we talk or think about." Sadia said, "I don't want to leave my sister and my mother." Just then, Sadia sounded like a kid. She is a kid. By this time, if things went as planned, Sadia is now a married girl. She would be part of the reported "large-scale cases of forced, hasty and ill-considered girl-child marriages" in earthquakedevastated areas documented and being reported by Pakistan women's groups. There are other phenomena which are forms of survival for the victims, and exploitation for profit by the others - trafficking of girl-children for sex work, child labour; and removal and sale of human organs/limbs. The urgent call then is for government to provide security and protection from these inhumane acts of exploitation.

Play
Boys at Nasreen's age were playing rugby outside while we were talking. Girls her age are running the household; if not, getting married to run another man's household.

It was reported that in the 2004 tsunami-survivor communities, children make up a big percentage of people suffering from post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, exhibiting symptoms of anxiety and depression. In Hatian Bala, were Nasreen and Sadia allowed to even feel sad, or feel the loss of their mother and sister? According to the different reports of the Pakistan women's groups, psycho-social trauma counseling and healing is one area which has been either neglected, or not prioritised. Thus, attention of the government and the international aid agencies is being called to this critical need of children.

The month of August is monsoon season. When I was a kid, one of our play songs would be "Rain, rain, go away. Little children want to play." On the first 10 days of this month alone, more than 800 patients had been treated for acute diarrhea in a district hospital in NWFP. Its children's ward had been overwhelmed. Flooding had contaminated rivers and streams that children drank from, making them seriously ill, officials said. With still thousands of people living in camps situated in precarious locations, the monsoon rains can be deadly. Landslides and flashfloods are not mere possibilities but certainties. Rain, rain, go away.

Little children, and the big ones, too… want to live another day.