UN seeks record $70b for 'shockingly high' humanitarian aid needs

GENEVA - The United Nations and its partners on Thursday appealed for a record US$51.5 billion (S$70 billion) in aid money for 2023, with tens of millions more people expected to need assistance, testing the humanitarian response system “to its limits”.

The appeal represents a 25 per cent increase from 2022.

The UN Global Humanitarian Overview estimates that an extra 65 million people will need help in 2023, bringing the total to 339 million in 68 countries.

That represents more than 4 per cent of the people on the planet, or about the population of the United States.

“Humanitarian needs are shockingly high, as this year’s extreme events are spilling into 2023,” said UN emergency relief coordinator Martin Griffiths, citing

the war in Ukraine

and drought in the Horn of Africa.

“For people on the brink, this appeal is a lifeline.”

“It’s a phenomenal number and it’s a depressing number,” Mr Griffiths told reporters in Geneva, adding that it meant next year’s programme would be “the biggest humanitarian programme” the world has ever seen.

And the new estimate means that one in 23 people will need help in 2023, compared with one in 95 back in 2015.

As the extreme events seen in 2022 spill into 2023, Mr Griffiths described the humanitarian needs as “shockingly high”.

If all the people in need of emergency assistance were in one country, it would be the third-largest nation in the world, after China and India, he said.

“Lethal droughts and floods are wreaking havoc in communities from Pakistan to the Horn of Africa,” he said, also pointing to the war in Ukraine, which “has turned a part of Europe into a battlefield”.

More than 100 million people have been driven from their homes as conflict and climate change fuel a displacement crisis.

Nine months of war between Russia and Ukraine have disrupted food exports and around 45 million people in 37 countries are facing starvation, the Global Humanitarian Overview report said.

“Five countries already are experiencing what we call famine-like conditions, in which we can confidently, unhappily, say that people are dying as a result,” Mr Griffiths said.

Those countries – Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Haiti, Somalia and South Sudan – have seen portions of their populations face “catastrophic hunger” in 2022, but have not yet had countrywide famines declared.

Meanwhile, more than 28 million people are considered to be in need in drought-hit Afghanistan, which in 2021 saw the Taliban sweep back into power, while another eight million Afghans and their hosts in the region also need assistance.

In a related development, the Covid-19 pandemic has also led to major setbacks in child vaccination programmes and thwarted efforts to end extreme poverty, fuelling other diseases such as cholera, Mr Griffiths said on Thursday.

For the first time, 10 countries have individual appeals of more than US$1 billion – Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen.

But donor funding is already under strain with the multiple crises, forcing aid workers to make tough decisions on priorities.

The UN faces its biggest funding gap ever, with its unmet funding at 53 per cent in 2022, based on data up till mid-November.

“The humanitarian response system is being tested to its limits,” Mr Griffiths said, adding that the gap is “because of the needs, not the funding”.

Unlike other parts of the UN where fees depend on countries’ economic size, humanitarian funding is voluntary and relies overwhelmingly on Western donations.

The United States is by far the biggest donor, giving more than US$14 billion so far in 2022, while other major economies like China and India have given less than US$10 million each.

Faced with the towering funding needs, Mr Griffiths said he hoped 2023 would be a year of “solidarity, just as 2022 has been a year of suffering”.
REUTERS, AFP