“PEOPLE JUST don’t seem to have the money” was the feeling on Dawson Street yesterday as a sit-out began outside St Anne’s Church to raise funding for flood victims in Pakistan.
The church is holding the event to raise not just funds but awareness about the floods.
“There are so many disasters nowadays,” said Arthur Vincent, the church warden, “I think people just switch off the TV.”
Part of it was due to the recession, but also “people have become blasé” about disasters.
Trócaire said the response had been “fantastic” and Concern said it was “very generous”. However one aid agency said that, compared to the response to the earthquake that struck Haiti in January, the response had been “certainly slower”, but “the real slow response is from the international community”.
So far, according to Oxfam, just $3 (€2.35) for each person affected by the floods had been donated worldwide. Concern and Trócaire have between them received €1.65 million so far. Sixteen days after the earthquake in Haiti, Concern alone had raised €5.3 million.
By March, Dóchas, the umbrella organisation of Ireland’s overseas development organisations, estimated that Irish donations to aid agencies in Haiti exceeded €21 million.
In Britain, Oxfam has called for a “gear change”.
Some £100 million had been raised by the UK’s Disasters Emergency Committee in the days following the 2004 tsunami that hit Indonesia. So far, donations have reached £10 million for its Pakistan appeal.
The relative shortfall in donations has been associated in Britain with Pakistan being perceived as a hub for terrorism.
“The gravity of such a huge humanitarian crisis in a country so central to peace and stability in Asia and the Middle East has so far not been adequately recognised by the international community,” said Paul Healy, Trócaire’s regional manager in Pakistan.