The first thing that hits you when you walk into Jalozai is the children. From toddlers to teens, they roam the camp looking for food and something to do. Men cloaked in shawls who were fighters and farmers feel humiliated that they have now been forced to live in a place like this and cannot provide for their family.Jalozai is a makeshift camp outside Peshawar in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Nobody has official figures for the number of people in there. Estimates vary from 60,000 to100,000 with more coming in every day. They come because of the two year drought in Afghanistan and the renewed fighting. There isn't anything enough food and water and only now are aid agencies, like the International Rescue Committee, building latrines and digging ditches for sanitation.
We met one man who took us to his tent to show us his wife. She is dying, lying motionless covered in flies, with her seven children watching helpless nearby. The man wanted us to help - he knew that the only way to draw the world's attention to Jalozai was by showing us this.
Another woman in the north of the camp waved and asked us to come over just so someone could hear her story. She was a widow with eight children who haven't eaten for two days and there is no prospect of food on the horizon.
The Pakistan government is refusing to move the refugees into established camps in the region because it claims it cannot financially support them. With its own economy on the brink, it says it is time the US and Europe did something to help. The government and aid agencies operating there say the UN has only allocated them $2 million, which is $1 per refugee for the whole year. This figure doesn't take into account those in the camp at Jalozai because 'officially' they don't exist.
