Foreign aid for Pakistan flood victims ‘not even a drop but an insult’: Aiysha Siddiqa    

Environmentalist, storyteller and human rights advocate Aiysha Siddiqa has recently deplored the foreign aid and donations announced by countries like the US, UK and Australia to help rescue, relief and rehabilitation measures for Pakistani flood victims.

In a series of tweets, she said:  “I still don’t think people understand what it means for 33 million people to be displaced. That’s six times more people than those internally displaced in Ukraine from war, that’s roughly 90 per cent of the population of Canada. That’s how many people are internally homeless right now.”

Siddiqa further said the internally displaced people in Pakistan are even more than the entire population of Australia, and three times that of Portugal.

She said the United States with its $30 million donation has given less than $1 per person to the people displaced. “That’s not even a drop, it’s an insult.”

“For a country with CO2 emission of 0.98% per capita and which has contributed to the climate crisis less than 0.5%, we’re being thrown crumbs at, and told to be grateful. Imagine if for all you lost, you were given $1.”

Siddiqa said we (Pakistanis) are not responsible for climate change the way the US, China, Russia and Europe are. “Pakistan may look like a distant reality right now, but what is happening on our soil is the future of the rest of the world if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels. Wake up.”

Further criticizing the “meager” foreign aid, the environmental said Canada -- which contributes an annual 15.5 metric tons of carbon and is actively setting the earth on fire -- has given Pakistan $5 million in aid that is less than 50 cents/ person. “That’s the global north’s idea of reparations.”

Similarly, she said the UK – that has emitted more than 78 gigaton of carbon since 1750 – has given Pakistan 800,000 pounds that is two pence per person.

Calling this charity a hyperbole, Siddiqa said even the average person had more decency than to open his/her purse only to give a displaced person a penny.