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Pakistan and the United Nations have agreed to a 12-month early recovery plan for the earthquake survivors.

"Its objective is to support the longer-term road to recovery by bridging the end of the relief operations and the start of reconstruction," the UN said in a statement.

The new plan is expected to cost 286 million dollars, up from 188 million dollars and will be focused on improving the standard of living for affected communities. "Early Recovery Plan will not be an extra appeal," said Jan Vandemoortele, UN resident coordinator for Pakistan. "It offers an opportunity for donors to turn pledges into concrete contributions," he said.

The plan also aims to move away from relief and into rebuilding in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and North Western Frontier Province, the areas hardest hit by the quake.

Full Story // UNDP Pakistan Country Office // UNDP Projects and other information // UN Emergency Response: Pakistan Earthquake 2005 // UN South Asia Earthquake Flash Appeal (updated) // DRU and Pakistan // UN Volunteers // Beyond Relief: Transition to Recovery and Reconstruction

The World Bank must make disaster prevention an integral part of its lending to regions prone to earthquakes, cyclones and flooding to save lives and keep from squandering hundreds of billions of dollars in aid, a top official with the lender's watchdog agency said.

"Even of what you build, you can lose again and again and again if every time you have an earthquake you rebuild it in the same way," Chhibber said in an interview.

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The international shipping company DHL, together with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) today launched a standing programme based in Singapore to ensure that the right relief supplies reach people quickly in the case of a major natural disaster.

The DHL Disaster Response Team (DRT) is a pool of some 80 regular DHL employees who have volunteered and been trained to reduce bottlenecks at airports close to the scene of a major natural disaster by helping to organize the handling, warehousing and loading of relief supplies for onward transportation.

In December 2005, DHL entered into a partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and OCHA in the area of disaster management.

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UN Resident Coordinator/UNDP Resident Representative Knut Ostby today visited the earthquake-hit districts of Lorestan province to personally assess the situation. Mr Ostby informed officials that the UN agencies in Iran have so far donated USD$1,000,000 in cash and material goods for the government's relief and recovery efforts.

Full story // UNDP Iran Country Office // DRU & Iran

The United Nations has dispatched urgently-needed supplies to Iran and extended several emergency cash grants for relief efforts in the wake of the series of earthquakes that affected some 100,000 people in western Lorestan province last week, killing 70 and injuring at least 1,300 others.

Full story // UNDP Iran Country Office // DRU & Iran