Over the past few years, a sharp increase in conflicts and crises around the world has forced an unprecedented number of people to flee their homes, straining already underfunded global aid systems.
War has ravaged countries from Sudan to Ukraine. Climate change and extreme weather have forced it millions of to flee for protection. Gang violence is on the rise in Honduras Haiti. Radical Islamic insurgency And clashes broke out between Burkina Faso and Sahelian communities.
As a result of this integrated crisis, more than 114 million People were displaced from their homes in 2023, the highest number ever recorded by the UN refugee agency.
More than last year 360 million people Humanitarian aid is needed worldwide. To cover aid costs, the UN appealed to world donors – primarily governments but also philanthropic individuals and institutions – for a record $56 billion.
But even as humanitarian needs peak, funding for aid has fallen to its lowest level since 2019. Less than half That raised $56 billion. As a result, the gap between global humanitarian funding needs and donor contributions has grown the highest level over a period of more than 20 years.
And that’s not the worst part. What funding is available across the world’s crises is not allocated evenly. Conflicts in the Global South have increased dramatically underfunded. Last week, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), a major humanitarian organization, published their annual ranking The world’s most neglected displacement crisis. Nine out of 10 were in Africa.
In these countries, “complete neglect of displaced people has become the new normal,” said Jan Egeland, NRC Secretary General.
While there is no shortage of suffering around the world, long-neglected residents of violence-torn regions face even worse challenges without the help they need. Millions of people live in the total aid blindspot. The lack of funding has forced aid groups to cut food rations or prioritize communities on the brink of famine.
If major players allow neglected crises to fester without adequate funding for aid, they will continue to spiral out of control, spill over into neighboring countries and possibly destabilize the entire region, causing untold humanitarian suffering.
The world’s most neglected crisis
In this year’s report, the NRC named the West African country of Burkina Faso as home to the world’s most neglected crisis. Radical for almost a decade Islamic rebels Attacks against civilians and military personnel. Violence escalated 2019 While the militant group Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslim (JNIM) carried out more attacks in Burkina Faso than any other country in the region.
Amid unrelenting violence, weak governance and dismal economic opportunities, civilian self-defense groups have popped up to fight militant groups but also turn their weapons on each other. There is banditry, inter-communal violence, and deadly land disputes devastatedIn recent years in rural areas.
inside 2023 , more than 8,000 civilians were killed, nearly 150,000 people were forced to flee to neighboring countries, and more than 2 million people were sheltering in cities besieged by armed groups and inaccessible to aid agencies. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that $876 million was needed last year to provide an adequate humanitarian response in Burkina Faso, but only 39.4 percent That fund has been raised.
Other neglected countries at the top of the NRC’s list – Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Niger, Honduras, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Chad and Sudan, in descending order – face similar funding gaps. Beyond funding gaps, the NRC defines neglected crises that are glossed over in the media and that lack the political will of world leaders to intervene and find peaceful solutions.
For all countries except the Central African Republic, less than half of the funds requested for humanitarian assistance were raised last year. In Honduras, the poorest financed country and one plagued by organized crime, gang violence and high levels of femicide and food insecurity, only 16.5 percent of the $280 million needed for humanitarian aid was donated.
In contrast, OCHA estimates the needs of Ukraine and Gaza in 2023 at $3.9 billion and $376 million, respectively. In Ukraine, 72.8 percent of those funds were donated; In Gaza, 100 percent of requested funds have been collected.
Of course, no one wants to compare atrocities. There is undeniable suffering in Ukraine, Gaza and many other countries around the world, but the imbalance of funding and intervention actually exacerbates human suffering.
How exactly did the UN aid fund become so unbalanced? It allowed donor countries to prioritize funding for specific areas or even types of aid.
The price of neglect
Every year and in every country where the UN operates, OCHA calls on all major aid agencies to conduct a needs assessment and develop a humanitarian response plan, which outlines the humanitarian assistance needed for the coming year, explained Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for UN OCHA. The UN calculates the cost of that aid and then appeals to donors around the world to raise those funds.
A challenge with the current system is that donors can target their funding, meaning they can specify that their money should go to specific countries or specific types of aid, such as providing food aid. Thus, huge disparities in aid funding occur as donors decide which conflicts or crises are more important than others. The UN is at the mercy of donor priorities.
The growing gap between humanitarian needs and funding leads to dire consequences for millions of people. Last year the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) had the worstOver 60 years of funding shortages and forced food ration cuts in Syria, Yemen, Haiti and the DRC. In Sudan, where a power struggle between two military factions has created the world’s single largest displacement crisis, mothers resort to feeding their children. dirt and leaves. And the lack of intervention, the conflict drags on and on complicated.
In Burkina Faso, the United States and French governments have intervened primarily by providing military and counterterrorism assistance, although the conflict there has taken on political and economic forms. the crisis . As such, there is a mismatch between what is needed and what is being helped.
However, after two military coups took place in 2022, US agencies halted millions ofWith badly needed help.
As the security situation deteriorated from bad to worse, WFP had to rely increasingly on transporting food by helicopter rather than by truck, explained Elvira Prusini, WFP’s Country Director in Burkina Faso. According to Prusini, it costs $3,000 to $6,000 to move a ton of food by helicopter, compared to $150 to $250 to move a ton of food by truck. Additional expenses mean less budget for food purchases.
In protracted crises, the needs of refugees and displaced people become more complex, explained Helen Michou, NRC’s Global Advocacy Advisor. Providing aid to refugees for weeks or months means trucking in food, water and temporary shelter until they can return home. But when conflicts continue for years, refugees can live in camps for decades.
At that point, aid groups must provide long-term support — building sewage systems and water pipelines, providing education, helping refugees find jobs, and creating a legal framework in the host country to do so. All of that comes with a hefty price tag.
“WFP is forced to make these difficult choices about where to allocate limited resources,” Prusini said. “We have to make those decisions and decide who gets to eat and who doesn’t.”
Urgent solution for funding shortfall
Funding for next year doesn’t look good for countries like Burkina Faso As of June 11, UN OCHA has requested $934.6 million in aid for the country, and only 15.1 percent of it has been funded. This means that of the 2.7 million people currently in need of food assistance, WFP will only be able to reach 700,000 to 800,000 people, Prusini said.
To close the gap, the NRC and the UN have called on countries such as Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, which typically don’t provide much humanitarian aid, to freeze their donations. Michou also advocates for all donor countries to “increase humanitarian budgets with a focus on equitable financing in neglected crises or humanitarian blind spots.”
Aid groups need more timely and flexible funding allocations, Michou said, with funding spread over several years rather than annual allocations and funding not earmarked for specific countries or activities. Laerke said that while the UN has a consolidated fund of unassigned money, and has grown over the past 20 years, it is still short of the $1 billion target. The UN has begun replicating these funds at the country level so that they can be used more flexibly as humanitarian needs change.
Finally, the UN has implemented a practice called demarcation, which calls on aid groups to reduce their stated funding needs, focusing only on providing more immediate humanitarian needs and not toeing the line in providing development assistance, as they often have to do in protracted crises. . This has been controversial among aid workers; Some say this leads to a general underestimation of needs, especially for crises where aid cannot be easily separated from development.
When there’s only so much money to go around, it’s important that world leaders consider the places most in need of aid and not just the most geopolitically important countries. Life hangs in the balance.
A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect Newsletter. Register here!
