Around 1.45 million Pakistani citizens have fled from the Swat Valley in the north-west due to fighting.

Around 1.45 million Pakistani citizens have fled from the Swat Valley in the north-west, away from the mounting conflict between the Pakistan army and Taliban rebels, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The displacement is thought to be the largest and swiftest to take place anywhere in the world in recent years. According to Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) Social Welfare Department, 1,454,377 people have been registered since just 2 May, with the number of registration centres now standing at 89.

Ron Redmond, UNHCR’s Chief Spokesperson, said yesterday (20 May): “We haven’t seen anything so big and so fast in years.”

Most of the civilians come from Mingora, the main city in the Swat valley, where a curfew was temporarily lifted to allow residents to leave. The majority of the refugees are now living in camps run by the UNHCR, based around the city of Mardan.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres, who met some of the displaced people during a three-day visit to Pakistan last week, has called for urgent and massive international help from governments and other donors for those left homeless by fighting.

Guterres said at the weekend that humanitarian workers were struggling to keep up with the size and speed of the displacement and warned of the consequences if the uprooted people - and tens of thousands of host families trying to care for them – don’t get help fast.

“It’s like trying to catch something that’s moving ahead of us because the number of people on the move every day is so big and the response is never enough,” he told reporters on Sunday. “Leaving this population without the support they need - with such massive numbers - could constitute an enormous destabilizing factor.”

In addition to calling for international help, UNHCR is encouraging local donations. This week, the UNHCR office in Islamabad set up a dedicated bank account at Standard Chartered Bank to receive cash donations from the public for its operations.

Separately, it established a relief bank and distribution centre in the NWFP town of Nowshera to receive and hand out non-cash, so called “in kind” contributions such as pillows, soap, simple water coolers and new summer clothing. Additional relief banks are planned for the cities of Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is an impartial humanitarian organisation mandated by the United Nations to lead and co-ordinate international action for the world-wide protection of refugees and the resolution of refugee problems.