"We need to build back better" in Pakistan

Pakistan’s worst flooding in living memory has affected some 20 million people.

Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC

International Rescue Committee president George Rupp spoke at a discussion of the Pakistan flood crisis yesterday morning at the Asia Society in New York in advance of a United Nations special session on Pakistan later in the day. 

"It is absolutely crucial that we take the urgency of this immediate response very seriously," Rupp remarked.  "But it is just as important that we think in the long term from emergency response through ... to the post-emergency recovery and then reconstruction of the country."
  
"We need to build back better," he said, quoting former President Bill Clinton. "In many ways the response to the earthquake in Pakistan is a model for what we need to do in this instance as well, only it is a much more massive, long-term response that's required.  And we'll need to have the cooperation of all actors --  international community, Pakistan government, Pakistan civil society, international NGOs -- all working together within a framework that the government of Pakistan will have to establish for us."

Other speakers at the Asia Society discussion included Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi; the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke; and Rajiv Shah, USAID administrator.