Video of a child eating grass is not from flood-hit Pakistan

Hyderabad: This year, Pakistan received record-breaking monsoon rainfall that ravaged one-third of the country. According to an article in Pakistan's The Dawn, more than 33 million people have been affected by floods. Amidst the damage to over 1,460 health centres, WHO has issued a warning that the humanitarian situation in Pakistan is going to get worse.

Against this backdrop, a video of a child eating grass is viral on the Internet with the claim that the situation after the floods is so grave in Pakistan that a starving child is eating grass.

"This is the condition in Pakistan. Starving children eating grass, because there is nothing else to eat. Donate here," wrote a Facebook user who shared the video.

The user also asked for donations on a URL link.

(Note: NewsMeter checked the link and found that it is not associated with any credible organisation.)

Several Twitter and Facebook users have shared the video with similar claims. (Click here and here to view the archived posts)

Fact Check

NewsMeter performed a reverse image search of the keyframes of the video and found the same video on two different YouTube channels posted in February 2022, which is much before the devastating rainfall that wrecked Pakistan.

Moreover, both channels are making different claims. One of the channels, Nayab, claims that the video is of a Syrian child while the other channel, C'ronaldo Fan's, says the child in the video is from war-torn Ukraine.

Again, we performed a reverse image search of the keyframes and found the same video on a Persian website, Namasha. The website claims that a "Yemani child is eating grass."

While NewsMeter couldn't verify the exact location and year of the video, we found that the video has been online since February 2022. The floods hit Pakistan in June 2022. Hence, we can conclude that the video is not from Pakistan and the claim is misleading.