Gilgit-Baltistan is once again reeling from a wave of climate-driven devastation. Over the past two months, accelerating glacial melt, record-breaking heatwaves, monsoon cloudbursts, and multiple GLOFs have triggered flash floods and landslides, forming artificial lakes across the region.
In districts such as Ghizer, Gilgit, Rondu, Ghanche, and Hunza, glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) and landslides have swept away highways, bridges, and link roads, destroyed homes, schools, livelihoods, and critical infrastructure, cutting off entire communities from the rest of the world. Many residents remain stranded without access to basic services, while countless others have been displaced.
A devastating cloudburst on July 22 in Thak Nullah, near Babusar Top in Chilas, killed 10 tourists, swept away vehicles, and damaged homes, mosques, a girls’ school, and a number of bridges, blocking the Karakoram Highway. In Danyore, just a few kilometres east of Gilgit city, eight young volunteers tragically lost their lives while repairing a major water channel.
In Hunza District, Hassanabad, Gulmit, Shimshal, and Chipursan valleys as well as in Baghicha, Hushe, and Astak valleys of Baltistan, flash floods have washed away bridges, roads, trees, tourist facilities, and irrigation channels, compounding the devastation across the mountainous terrains.
Unequal impacts on vulnerable communities
The unprecedented deluge brings into sharp focus the human tragedies and environmental toll. This disaster is not just an act of nature, but also the human interference in nature — neoliberal development model, resource capture by the elite and unregulated mass tourism — gaps in governance, preparedness, the intersection of climatic extremes, fragile infrastructure, suffering of vulnerable segments of society.
Unless these vulnerable segments — borne by women, children, older people, and persons with disabilities — are placed at the centre of relief and recovery, and the ‘secluded valleys’ are brought into focus, the cycle of neglect will continue.
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Women are on the frontlines of caregiving, responsible for protecting children and older relatives in unsafe shelters, often while losing their own livelihoods—livestock, kitchen gardens, or home-based enterprises. They also face heightened risks of harassment and gender-based violence in overcrowded camps.
Children face disrupted education, exposure to contaminated water, and heightened risks of malnutrition and disease. For many, the trauma of losing homes and schools will have long-lasting effects.
Older adults struggle with mobility and health needs, often left behind during evacuations or cut off from essential medicines. Many of them live in remote valleys where access to health services has collapsed.
Persons with disabilities are doubly excluded. Most evacuation routes, shelters, and water and sanitation facilities are not designed for their needs.
Early warning systems rarely account for those with hearing, visual, or cognitive impairments, leaving them dangerously vulnerable.
The crisis is worsened by “silent pockets” of suffering. In Astak, Rondu, for example, people are living without electricity for days. In this digital age, mobile connectivity in such villages depends on electricity: no power means no signals, no phone calls, no internet. Villages like Tuqla and Khumshaa cannot share their situation on social media or call for urgent help. While some communities can amplify their plight online, these isolated valleys remain invisible—suffering in silence, with no way for the outside world to know what they are enduring.
A call for inclusive response
To prevent such silence from costing more lives, relief and recovery must be inclusive and responsive to the most vulnerable. The government and humanitarian actors should make shelters, health services, and water facilities safe and accessible for women, children, older adults, and persons with disabilities.
Small bridges, footpaths, and link roads should be restored to connect remote valleys to clinics and markets.
Local government should be restored, empowered and local-level operations with drones, trained volunteers, and alternative communication tools such as radio networks, real-time satellite monitoring combined with community-led alerts must be put in place for rapid response even in cut-off valleys where electricity and mobile signals are unreliable.
Targeted livelihood and cash support should be provided to women-headed households, persons with disabilities, and older adults who often fall outside formal relief packages.
This is a moment for the government and humanitarian community to act—not just to rebuild what was lost, but to ensure that no one is left unseen, unheard, or unsupported.
Roheena Ali Shah is a gender expert and scholar from Gilgit-Baltistan. She contributes essays on social issues to the High Asia Herald, regularly.
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