Business in Disaster and Humanitarian Organizations Experiences and Impact:A Case Study of Balakot Bazaar

Abstract

The paper is about the humanitarian organizations’ role in situations of disasters.
The focus of the study is on the humanitarian organizations’ role for thebusiness
community after the disaster. Different dimensions have been taken into account
while studying the interaction of humanitarian organizations and the business
community. The study took place in Balakot bazaar, situated in North-East of
Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa. 8th October 2005 earthquake destroyed this bazaar and
only few shops were remained untouched. The paper is based on the data,
collected during the field work in Balakot bazaar. After the earthquake many
humanitarian organizations came to help the affected people of this area and
started working for the recovery of the people in the bazaar and in the
surrounding areas. It is practically not possible to include all these organizations
in the study. For this reason, four humanitarian organizations have been selected,
so that for the sake of in-depth study. The study has been conducted after five
years to see the impacts of different organizations and government agencies on
the people of Balakot as a whole and business community in particular. For this
purpose, four case studies have been taken. These are Citizen Network for
Foreign Affairs (CNFA), SRSP, International Catholic Migration Commission
(ICMC) and Oxfam. The study is carried out to see the different dimensions that
affected the humanitarian organizations’ efforts in the area and also to see their
impact on business community. The methodology is flexible and most of the data
was collected through participant observation, formal and informal talking and
some informal interviews.The results of the study show that there are multiple
factors that affect the work of humanitarian organizations with the affected
people. These are the political setup of the area, caste composition, topographical
distribution of area, urban and rural distribution, state priorities and
considerations etc. At the same time the people and their business orientation is
affected by the work of humanitarian organizations.