The infoasaid research report ‘Providing Humanitarian Information to Flood-Affected People in Pakistan’ provides a snapshot of the effectiveness of humanitarian information efforts in the provinces of Sindh and Punjab in Pakistan three months after the devastating July 2010 floods.
The primary goal of the research that surveyed over 1,000 people from eight flood-affected areas in these provinces in November and December 2010, was to provide real-time information to support rapid and effective humanitarian information efforts.
The report offers an overall picture of ‘oases and deserts’.The report offers an overall picture of ‘oases and deserts’. While certain areas and groups had better access to information, whether by media or direct from organisational and official sources, many other areas and groups had little to no meaningful access at all.
The report confirmed several suppositions but also included several surprises. For example, access to mass media was measurably higher in Sindh than in southern Punjab; and gender disparities in access, while still dramatic in both locations, were markedly less in Sindh. This ran counter to many assumptions but was backed up by other observations from the field. The report shows that flood-affected people mainly received information that helped them through word-of-mouth from friends and family (the most trusted source of information), followed by TV and radio.