When the Skies Cleared

Amina, a mother of six from Bishonai Kalay in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Buner Valley, lost everything in minutes. When a deadly cloudburst struck in August 2025, floodwaters tore through her village, sweeping away her crops, farmland, belongings, and the family’s only goat. “We can barely afford food now, let alone warm clothes for winter,” she says.

Her husband, paralyzed for two years, cannot work. The harvest meant to sustain the family through winter vanished overnight. Like thousands across Buner, Amina now lives in an emergency tent, struggling with fear each time dark clouds gather. The devastation was widespread. Across Pakistan, the 2025 monsoon floods affected millions, destroyed homes, and wiped out vast stretches of farmland, reopening wounds still fresh from the catastrophic floods of 2022.

UNDP teams were among the first responders in Buner, Swat, and Shangla, delivering agricultural toolkits, heat-efficient cooking stoves, and rapidly assessing damaged schools, health facilities, water systems, and roads to guide recovery. In November, Shoko Noda, UN Assistant Secretary-General and Director of UNDP’s Crisis Bureau, visited Pakistan to reaffirm UNDP’s long-term commitment to climate-resilient recovery. Speaking at a relief distribution in Buner, she praised the strength of survivors and emphasized that emergency support is only the first step toward rebuilding safer, stronger communities.

Drawing on lessons from the 2022 Flood Recovery Programme, UNDP is pairing immediate relief with long-term solutions, from climate-resilient livelihoods and infrastructure to early warning systems and clean energy. For families like Amina’s, recovery is just beginning. But with sustained support, it is no longer a journey they must face alone.

“Together with our partners, we will continue to advance climate-resilient farming, clean energy solutions, disaster risk reduction and the restoration of essential infrastructure, ensuring that recovery leads to lasting resilience.” – Shoko Noda, UN ASG and Director of UNDP Crisis Bureau 

Story by Muhammad Omer Hayat, Communications Officer, UNDP Pakistan; field quotes from Syeda Zainab, Programme Management Specialist and Rabiya Kamran, Communications Support Officer