Mukhtar Mai Women’s Organization Serves as Refugee Camp for Nearby Flood

Survivors

Kelly Holz
Tuesday, 10 August 2010

In the early hours of Tuesday, August 3, 2010, Mukhtar Mai was woken by the
arrival of hundreds of villagers to her home. All were seeking refuge from the flood that
is currently devastating villages and cities all over Pakistan. She promptly roused the
staff and volunteers of her self-made NGO, Mukhtar Mai Women’s Organization, and
converted her entire property into a makeshift refugee camp.
For the villagers of Meerwala and the surrounding areas of rural Southern Punjab,
the home of Mukhtar Mai is continually an oasis of safe haven.
Mukhtar Mai, now an international figure, gained her prominence as a champion
of women’s rights in 2002 when she challenged the Pakistani gender status quo,
demanding reparations for the violence and trauma of the state-sanctioned gang rape she
suffered. Where before women were expected to kill themselves if they underwent such
an act of dishonor, Mukhtar rose to fight for the rights of not only herself, but of all the
Pakistani women living in oppression. She used the government funds allocated to her to
open Mukhtar Mai’s Girls Model School, operating under the banner of “ending
oppression through education.”
Mukhtar Mai Women’s Organization, or MMWO, now operates two girls’
schools, a school for boys, and a shelter home and resource center for battered women.
The entire property, including the adjacent police station, was immediately opened to the
hundreds of families from nearby villages, whose homes had been devastated by the
flood.
The women’s shelter home, which had been created to house women fleeing
violence and abuse, seeking the protection of Mukhtar Mai’s compassion, was opened to
over twenty women and their accompanying children. The woman and children that had
been residing in the shelter before the crisis were safely relocated to Mukhtar’s personal
home.
The boy’s school was completely converted into a shelter, with five to ten
families crowding into each of the individual classrooms. As the steady stream of
families continued to make their way to Mukhtar’s throughout the day, the personal
homes of her brothers and their families were additionally opened to the villagers.
Women with sacks of feed on their heads carried babies and pulled along cattle
through the downpour. Men carried cots and remaining food resources, and trails of
donkeys packed with families’ entire meager possessions continued through the gates.
“This is all we have left,” women continued to report to the staff of MMWO. “Our crops
are ruined. Our houses are completely destroyed. This is all we have left.”
The dairy farm run by MMWO was emptied of its cattle, which were then tied
outside in the rain with the hundred or so livestock saved by the families from their
flooded properties. Families then occupied the dairy stalls, crowding on top of piles of
animal feed to keep warm. The rain outside continued to drum on.
Food became an immediate priority, and the adjacent police station was converted
into an emergency feeding station. MMWO gathered as much food reserves as it could
spare, and women and children waited patiently in the ceaseless rain for their family’s
allocated share. Children carried plates of rice to their younger brothers and sisters, and
women gathered the rice into buckets. Even the women’s own dupattas, or head scarves,
served to carry the food back to the families crowded in the shelters.
Over eighty five families took refuge from Mukhtar Mai over the next few days,
averaging five children per woman interviewed. Families came from up to ten kilometers
south of Meerwala, in the Muzaffargarh District, where the villages were devastated by
the floods. Families reported that their entire acreage of crops had been completely
destroyed. In most of the cases, the families’ mud-brick houses had been ruined as well.
“We are a humanitarian organization,” MMWO’s National Coordinator Shafique
Malik explained. “We have an obligation to help these families as much as we can.”
The compassion of Mukhtar Mai and the staff of her organization reaches far
above and beyond the NGO’s mandate to promote women’s rights through education.
MMWO is selflessly sharing all of the precious resources it has amassed in rural Pakistan
to provide shelter and food to those in critical need.
However, the food and petrol stores are sparse, and as the days continue with no
relief from the government, resources are quickly drying up. The only assistance
received so far by MMWO in its humanitarian efforts has been rice rations provided by
another local Pakistani NGO.
“There is only so much we can do,” Malik continues remorsefully. “It will take
years to rebuild these communities.”
As the water level in the areas nearest Meerwala has stabilized, for now, Malik is
currently spearheading the effort to assist those communities in the area of the
organizations second girl’s school, located 30 kilometers away in Gabar Arani.
“There,” he says, “there are no NGOs, no government. No one is assisting those
people. There are families sitting on their roofs, without communication, awaiting help.”
In Gabar Arani, the MMWO school will eventually have to be at least partially
rebuilt due to damage from the floods. Currently, however, the organization is focused
first and foremost on the humanitarian needs of the villagers.
To date, the flood has not reached the property of Mukhtar Mai and MMWO in
Meerwala, although the organization is suffering from severe shortages of electricity.
They continue to offer as much humanitarian assistance as possible to the surrounding
communities in need.

Any inquiries, or anyone wishing to make a donation to MMWO’s relief efforts and the
surrounding Meerwala community, can be directed to mukhtarmaimmwwo@yahoo.com .

Kelly Holz is currently serving as an MMWO volunteer in Meerwala through Tufts

University’s Institute for Global Leadership and Human Rights Foundation NY, and will
be serving as the Asylum Network Coordinator for Physicians for Human Rights in the
fall. She can be contacted at holz.kelly@gmail.com .

Photo Captions
[all photos taken by Kelly Holz]
1- A grandfather and child seek refuge among dozens of other families on cots
provided in MMWO’s boy’s school
2- Women relocate their livestock from their flooded homes, hauling as much feed
as they can carry for miles in the rain
3- MMWO shelter home for battered women opens its doors to house dozens more
displaced women and children
4- Women gather rice into all available portable containers, even using their personal
dupattas, or head scarves
5- Truck beds filled to the brim with families’ entire possessions shuttle back and
forth across the flooded canal, depositing the goods safely on MMWO’s grounds