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I'm Paddy Ashdown. I'm here for the Humanitarian Emergency Review with Ross Mountain.
We're in Pakistan, actually we flew out last night.
So if both of us look bleary eyed it's only because we haven't had any sleep.
We've had a depressing day I must tell you. We've just flown over the flooded area,
it is absolutely immense. I mean this in truth has swallowed everybody's
resources. I expected bad but I have never seen it as
bad as this and now we are visiting these internally displaced IDP camps, which are
of course huge. The one behind me is 700 families, multiplied
by seven for an average Pakistani family, that's about 4900 people.
Actually they are better conditions than they say they were a few weeks ago, so that's good
news. We're learning, we're learning how we can
do this better. The next stop is to meet with officials who
are helping to run this. The aim of all this is to make sure that when
we produce our review, which is building on the good work that DFID does, when we produce
that review it says, ok we may be quite good but how can we do it better and above all
how can we make the international community system better.
We are actually informed in the conclusions that we reach, by what it is really like on
the ground. It's very, very, very tough here.
It's going to take some time to get rid of this huge humanitarian crisis.
And the truth is that after Haiti, which has depleted all our resources, not least of really
capable people. It's very difficult to do two or three of
these, but that's what the future is going to be.
The fact is that these are going to get more frequent and more severe, so that's what the
review's about, that's why I am here.
To find out more about the independent Humanitarian Emergency Response Review, please visit: www.dfid.gov.uk/emergency-response-review