In the immediate aftermath of a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Nepal in late April, international aid agencies and foreign governments deployed emergency aid, search-and-rescue and medical teams, and helicopters. Within days, the American Red Cross received $8.8 million in donations and pledges, the Mercy Corps raised $2.9 million, and Facebook users donated $10 million for International Medical Corps.
But one month on, donor fatigue may have set in despite the fact that many Nepalese residents remain homeless and hungry.
Of the $423 million that the United Nations requested in a flash appeal to donors, only $92.4 million, or 22 percent, has been raised so far, Reuters reported. The money is needed to provide up to two million individuals with early relief efforts like tents, tarpaulin sheets, dry food rations, safe drinking water, and toilets for the next three months, said the BBC.
A United Nations official told Reuters on Monday that people are focused on reconstruction efforts instead of emergency and early relief necessities like food and shelter. “The talk now is about reconstruction, but we are trying to remind people that in between search and rescue and recovery, there is a phase called relief and we can’t forget that,” Jamie McGoldrick, U.N. resident coordinator in Nepal said.
Nepal’s traditional donors are “more ‘development’ focused and were likely holding back funds for long-term reconstruction and recovery projects,” McGoldrick explained.
With the monsoon season expected to come in a few weeks, early relief supplies are still needed in remote areas of Nepal. The heavy rains from the monsoons are expected to “trigger many more massive landslides, threatening destroyed villages with complete obliteration, and possibly blocking more rivers, with the risk of catastrophic floods,” Al Jazeera reported.
Dr. Ram Sharan Mahat, Nepal’s Finance Minister, told the BBC on Monday that “less than 10% of the money spent on relief by his government came from overseas.” He also added that “he hoped future international donations would be managed directly by his government.”
Long-term projects may also be affected. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) indicated that many operations, like helping injured people, clearing away rubble, and supplying roofing materials could cease operations without more aid money.
“The emergency has been funded, but the pipeline has not, which means that we’re about to fail in our commitment to ensure rural families have the tools they need to survive the monsoon, which starts in two weeks, and then the approaching winter,” IOM Nepal Chief of Mission Maurizio Busatti said in a press release. Busatti added, “It is incredibly frustrating to have hammered together a solid platform from which to deliver aid, identified dedicated staff and volunteers, and secured the commitment of local government, only to find that the cupboards are bare.”
Even with limited aid money, the Nepalese government has been slow to distribute shelter materials and food aid because of a customs backlog. The government also didn’t lift import taxes for some items needed for victims. VOA News reported that “even for local organizations the effort required to get supplies donated from overseas has proven to be Kafkaesque, requiring multiple trips among several ministries to get signatures for clearances of imports.” The country even turned away three Royal Air Force Chinook helicopters from the British government after the first earthquake.
Mahat accused international aid organizations of “working independently of government structures,” stating that “the international community provided relief materials, the services and some goods but they didn’t give money — they have their own institutions and agencies to deliver the services… It would be better if it had come through the government — that way we would have equitably distributed the relief materials to all the people.”
The Nepalese government was previously criticized in the past for poor governance and widespread corruption, coming in far behind at 126 out of 174 on the 2014 Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index. But so have international agencies.
As many as 70 Village Development Committees (VDCs), or administrative units that cover “several square kilometres and [include] perhaps 1,000 households, and many thousands of people” still have not received relief money, Al Jazeera found. But the publication also found that many of the worst hit areas didn’t receive “government or donor-driven support even before the earthquake. Health, education and other provisions (such as transport infrastructure) were minimal. In a mundane way, life was already pretty desperate there, making people more vulnerable to calamity.”
More than 8,600 people were killed. At least 16,800 people were injured, 500,000 homes destroyed, and another 268,000 homes damaged in the April 25 earthquake and May 12 aftershock. The total cost of Nepal’s damage hovers anywhere between $100 million and $10 billion.