United Nations Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Valerie Amos, visited flood-affected areas in the southern Sindh province on Friday (December 3), four months after the arrival of the worst inundations in the South Asian nation's recent history. Amos, along with her team and Pakistani officials, flew over Dadu district and adjoining areas. She visited camps and tent schools in the town of Sehwan to meet the hardest flood hit communities. This is Amos' second visit to Pakistan since starting with the United Nations on 6 September 2010. The primary purpose of her return mission is to emphasize continued commitment to the people of Pakistan during this emergency, a statement from her office said. Pakistan's heavy monsoon rains and floods, which started at the end of July, affected an estimated 18 million people and washed away entire communities. The majority of people in Khyber Paktunkwa and Punjab have returned to their home districts and have begun the long road to recovery. The southern Pakistan provinces of Sindh and Balochistan, still reeling from the record floods, will take months to recover, according to the spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Large areas of land are still under water and some communities remain surrounded by flood waters. Many farmers will not be able to plant winter crops. Local authorities are looking into how stagnant water can be pumped from villages, but this will be a massive undertaking and is likely to take time. In Sindh, more than 1 million people were in some 3,200 camps or makeshift sites at the time of a UNHCR survey more than a month ago, but the numbers have fallen since, according to the agency. A further 60,000 displaced were in camps in Balochistan. The floods, which rolled from north to south in an unprecedented tide of destruction, destroyed or damaged more than 1.7 million homes, official figures show. The immense scale of the disaster continues to pose a huge challenge to the government and aid agencies. "Here in Sindh, we have a situation where the waters have not fully receded. We still have communities and villages which are cut off. There still continues to be an urgent need for help, particularly in the area of shelter. It's getting colder. We need to make sure that people have access to clean water and the sanitation facilities," said Valerie Amos, U.N Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. More than 100,000 flood victims in Pakistan are likely to spend winter in camps because many villages in the country's south remain under stagnant water, the United Nations refugee agency says. "But we also have to help people who want to go back, and increasingly people are wanting to go back. They want to rebuild their lives; they want to be able to plant crops so that they can feed their families next year. So, it's still an emergency situation but we are also trying to make sure that we help those who can return," Amos said. The United Nations and its humanitarian partners, working alongside the government of Pakistan, have already reached millions of affected people with life-saving assistance and are working to assist many millions more through recovery activities. Organizations responding to the crisis requested nearly 1.94 billion U.S. dollars from donors to cover humanitarian and recovery activities. So far, 958 USD million has been received - 49 percent of what is needed. Failure to deliver aid and compensation to millions of Pakistanis made homeless by the floods could lead to social unrest, especially as cold temperatures bite in the south Asian nation at the heart of U.S. efforts to stabilise Afghanistan. Amos is scheduled to meet with the prime minister, the foreign minister, the minister of economic affairs and the head of the National Disaster Management Authority. She will also meet with representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the United Nations.