The devastating floods sweeping across Pakistan’s northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, especially in Swat and Buner, have claimed over 400 local lives and 788 across the country since late June. Torrential rains, flash floods, and glacial lake outbursts have destroyed homes, displaced thousands, and inflicted billions of dollars in damage. Survivors face acute shortages of clean water, medicine, and essential supplies, raising the risk of waterborne diseases and further humanitarian distress. The impact illustrates country’s deep vulnerabilities beyond environmental factors with Pakistan’s struggle against natural disasters closely intertwined with its complex peace and security challenges.
Pakistan is ranked 144th on the Global Peace Index 2025 and second position on the Global Terrorism Index 2025. These ranking reflect ongoing conflict, terrorism, and socio-economic instability in the country that exacerbate the human cost of natural disasters and obstruct timely response and recovery. The country’s frequent exposure to natural shocks, coupled with fragile governance and weak institutional capacity, widens humanitarian gaps and delays relief efforts.
Positive Peace refers to the attitudes, institutions, and structures that support and sustain peaceful societies, fostering reliance, well-being and long term prosperity. It offers a framework for social change by describing the conditions under which human potential can thrive. The Institute’s Pillars of Peace is based on an analysis of over 40,000 datasets, identifying eight interconnected factors that provide a roadmap for building and maintaining lasting peace, which is used in analysing the Flood Crisis in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province,
Well-Functioning Government
The floods exposed gaps in disaster governance. While agencies coordinated search, rescue, and aid, inconsistent responses, poor communication, and delays in hard-hit regions eroded public trust at a time when stability was most needed.
Sound Business Environment
Agriculture which is the backbone of rural livelihoods was devastated, while urban flooding disrupted industries and supply chains. Businesses in cities like Karachi faced closures and losses, slowing recovery and fuelling migration.
Equitable Distribution of Resources
Rural and poorer communities bore the greatest losses yet received the slowest relief. Thousands of displaced families struggled to access clean water, shelter, food, and health services, deepening long-standing inequalities. The UN says the most urgent needs are in remote mountain areas, where landslides have cut off access and communities face rising hunger, water shortages, and disease. UNICEF warns children are particularly vulnerable, with damaged schools, scarce safe water, and growing protection concerns, while providing hygiene kits and restoring water supplies. The WHO is leading disease surveillance and control to prevent outbreaks.
Acceptance of the Rights of Others
Competition for scarce resources tested social cohesion. Marginalized groups, including minorities and internally displaced persons often had less access to protection and support, raising risks of favouritism and tension in aid distribution.
Good Relations with Neighbours
The floods underscored the urgency of cross-border cooperation on water management. Without shared data, early warnings, and joint mitigation strategies, transboundary disasters risk both humanitarian suffering and diplomatic strain.
Free Flow of Information
Flood damage to bridges, roads and power lines has not only cut communities off physically but also disrupted vital communications. In Gilgit-Baltistan’s Ghizer district, villages stranded by a blocked river were left with no access to phones, roads or emergency services. Across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the destruction of schools and health centres meant families, particularly women and children lacked clear information on where to find help.
These breakdowns created delays in rescues and left people at risk of misinformation, widening the gap between those in need and those seeking to assist them. Restoring communication networks and strengthening local information-sharing remain urgent, life-saving priorities.
High Levels of Human Capital
Disruptions to education, health systems, and nutrition further eroded resilience. Disease outbreaks and school closures compounded existing development challenges, requiring sustained investment beyond immediate relief.
Low Levels of Corruption
Reports of mismanagement and favouritism in aid distribution weakened confidence in institutions. Transparent and accountable relief operations are essential to ensure fairness, legitimacy, and international support. Survivors voiced anger that alerts failed to reach them, noting that mosque loudspeakers which is normally a key warning system in rural areas, fell silent as the floods hit without notice.
Pakistan’s recurring floods are more than environmental tragedies, they are systemic shocks that reveal how governance, equity, and social cohesion are tightly interlinked. Each failure in disaster response reverberates across institutions, economies, and communities, illustrating that peace and resilience cannot be compartmentalized.
A systemic perspective on Positive Peace emphasizes that the eight pillars do not operate in isolation but function as a mutually reinforcing network. Weakness in one pillar, such as corruption or inequitable resource distribution will quickly erodes others, amplifying collective fragility. Conversely, progress in one domain, like transparent governance or regional cooperation, can generate ripple effects that bolster trust, reduce conflict drivers, and strengthen adaptive capacity.
This recognition calls for more than piecemeal reforms. Building resilience requires systemic integration: aligning governance accountability with social equity, scaling education alongside disaster preparedness, and embedding cooperation across borders as well as communities. By adopting a systems-led Positive Peace approach, Pakistan can transform its vulnerabilities into a more resilient, interconnected foundation for peace and one capable of withstanding not just environmental disasters but the deeper stresses threatening its long-term stability.
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Identifying and measuring the factors that drive peace
