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Hosts of Pakistan’s fleeing masses on brink of their own displacement, World Vision warns

Islamabad, 28 May 2009
Culture of hospitality pushed to its limits as communities provide refuge for hundreds of thousands fleeing violence

Hosts selling assets and sharing everything they have, risking their own displacement
A host villager agonises, “It will be easier to die than to ask displaced to leave.”
Poor communities in Pakistan’s northwest are hosting up to two million people uprooted by recent violence in the region. Aid agency World Vision warns these communities – already among the poorest in the world – may join those displaced in days as their assets are sold to help those in need.

“Families have provided refuge for up to 90 percent of those escaping the fighting,” said Graham Strong, World Vision’s Country Director in Pakistan. “They are sharing their homes, food, clothes and water. They are poor already and are making themselves poorer in the process.”

Many assets are being sold to meet the growing need. “As the disaster continues,” explained Strong, “hosts are having to sell their land, cattle and other assets at far less than the market value in order to keep providing for their guests.”

As the only international aid agency providing assistance in Buner District, World Vision talked to host villagers whose limited resources are almost depleted.

They expressed a major concern that their cultural code of hospitality and compassion is being stretched to its limit and could be masking the scale of the need caused by the crisis.

“Without urgent assistance there is a real fear that impoverished host communities could contribute to another wave of internal displacement,” said Strong.

“The cultural ethic of generosity and hospitality means hosts are now facing the agonising choice between asking guests to leave or becoming destitute and displaced themselves,” he continued.