Pandemic sees UN aid bill surge
The UN humanitarian office says needs for assistance have ballooned to unprecedented levels this year because of Covid-19, predicting that a staggering 235 million people will require help in 2021.
This comes as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and global challenges including conflicts, forced migration and the impact of global warming.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) expects a 40 per cent increase in the number of people in need of such assistance in 2021 compared to this year.
OCHA made the projections in its latest annual Global Humanitarian Overview yesterday, saying its aim of reaching 160 million of those people in need would cost US$35 billion. That’s more than twice the record US$17b that donors have provided for the international humanitarian response so far this year – and a target that is almost certain to go unmet.
‘‘The picture we’re painting this year is the bleakest and darkest perspective on humanitarian needs we’ve ever set out, and that’s because the pandemic has reaped carnage across the most fragile and vulnerable countries on the planet,’’ said UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock, who heads OCHA.
‘‘For the first time since the 1990s, extreme poverty is going to increase, life expectancy will fall, the annual death toll from HIV, tuberculosis and malaria is set to double,’’ he said. ‘‘We fear a neardoubling in the number of people facing starvation.’’
Lowcock told a UN briefing in New York that the UN would probably raise a record US$20b by the end of the year – US$2b more than last year. But the gap between needs and funding was growing, and the UN was looking to ‘‘new players’’ coming on the scene in 2021, including US President-elect Joe Biden’s new administration.
The UN aimed to reach about two-thirds of those in need, with the Red Cross and other humanitarian organisations trying to meet the rest, Lowcock said.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said humanitarian aid budgets were facing dire shortfalls as the impact of the pandemic continued to worsen,
‘‘For the poorest, the hangover from the pandemic will be long and hard.’’ Mark Lowcock, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
and extreme poverty had risen for the first time in more than a generation.
‘‘Those already living on a knife’s edge are being hit disproportionately hard by rising food prices, falling incomes, interrupted vaccination programmes and school closures,’’ he said.
The overview has put together nearly three dozen individual
response plans for a total of 56 ‘‘vulnerable’’ countries.
Lowcock said the biggest problem was in Yemen, where there was danger of ‘‘a large-scale famine’’. A prime reason was a lack of funding from Gulf countries that were major donors in the past.
He said the biggest financial request was for the Syrian crisis and its spillover to neighbouring countries, where millions of Syrians have fled to escape the more than nine-year civil war.
OCHA said other countries in need included Afghanistan, Congo, Haiti, Nigeria, South Sudan, Ukraine and Venezuela. Newcomers to this year’s list are Mozambique, Pakistan and Zimbabwe.
‘‘For the poorest, the hangover from the pandemic will be long and hard,’’ Lowcock said. ‘‘We can let 2021 be the year of the grand reversal – the unravelling of 40 years of progress – or we can work together to make sure we all find a way out of this pandemic.’’
–AP