Thank you so much, Mr. Chair and committee members, for discussing the situation in Pakistan.
Islamic Relief Canada is part of a global family, a global network. In Pakistan specifically, our teams have been active for more than 30 years. Currently, we have 400 staff members throughout the country, and 100 specifically working in Balochistan. Islamic Relief Pakistan has, so far, reached more than 550,000 individuals in providing life-saving aid.
I'd like to provide a first-hand account from August 17 to August 28. I was on the ground in Pakistan, especially in Balochistan. This is a province that, even compared to the rest of the country, has already been lagging in terms of the infrastructure that's there. Most of the areas that have been impacted by this flooding.... Most of Balochistan was already under extreme poverty. You're talking about six million out of the 12 million individuals there already living in poverty.
What I saw on the ground were people who had lost not only their homes—and in some cases their lives—but a dignified way of earning a livelihood. Most of the rural parts of Pakistan rely on either agriculture or animal rearing. Because of global warming and climate change, what has happened is that in this area of Balochistan, just two months before the flooding, there was a severe drought. It hadn't rained there for a long period of time. You go from drought-like conditions to excess rainfall, where the infrastructure isn't there to manage all of the excess water. More than 30 million people have been impacted and have lost the ability to provide a dignified livelihood for their families.
Even when the cameras leave, when the media stops talking about the situation in Pakistan, we know and we fear that for many years down the line the impact will still be there. This is a larger impact than the earthquake and the floods that happened a decade ago.
Islamic Relief is doing what we can. We appreciate the Government of Canada for initially announcing rapid deployment funds of $5 million, and then $30 million. Islamic Relief has had a presence in Pakistan, and $2 million was deployed through us. Islamic Relief is also part of the Humanitarian Coalition, a pre-vetted group that has received government funding in order to make sure that efficient, transparent and effective aid can get to the people who are in most need.
Canadians have been very generous in this crisis. I can report that just with Islamic Relief Canada, we have raised $5.5 million since the middle of August, specifically for Pakistan. Canadians from coast to coast do care about the crisis and are willing to heed the call of the matching funds to donate more.
Mr. Chair, I'd like to mention that in the previous session we spoke about climate change. I think one element of this crisis in a country like Pakistan is that when you look at their GDP and their debt financing, it is really handicapped by not being able to invest in climate-resistant infrastructure.
An initiative that I saw on the ground, when we talk about disaster reduction, is something as simple as a $5,000 flood wall. It's stones and can be built in strategic areas near the villages. The villagers showed me videos where the flood waters came and because we had done that intervention just six months ago, the waters bypassed their village and their homes, and their crops were protected.
I think it's this type of climate-resistant disaster risk reduction and common-sense initiatives that we need to empower both the NGOs and the governments to do more of.
Both the IMF and the World Bank, in terms of multilaterals, and I think Canada and some of the other nations, have a responsibility to talk about how we can do debt swaps to make sure that the country is not burdened by debt repayments. Some of those external debts can be forgiven and converted into climate-resistant and climate-adaptive interventions.
As you know, the ODA from Canada is extremely low. That's another area we'd like the government to increase, but the needs will remain for the people of Pakistan.
It's our hope that we can be standing with the people of Pakistan. They have more than 5,000 or 6,000 glaciers in the north. Unfortunately, global warming and climate change will probably mean that we will be having this conversation in the near future again, with climate disasters. It is an area of urgency.
Thank you so much.