The head of one of the world’s leading aid agencies has issued a stark warning over the “alarming lack of funding” for global humanitarian crises.
Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, noted that halfway through the current funding year, humanitarian organisations had received less than a third of money – 27% – needed to provide relief to people affected by crises worldwide.
“The current lack of funding is alarming. Despite increasing needs, substantially less money is available for humanitarian assistance compared with the same period last year,” he said.
“We are deeply concerned for those people already feeling the hard consequences of cuts.”
Egeland’s comments follow the release of data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in April that showed foreign aid from official donors in 2018 falling 2.7% from 2017, with a declining share going to the neediest countries.
The organisation noted that a large part of the drop was due to less aid being spent on hosting refugees, as arrivals slowed and rules were tightened on which refugee costs can come out of official aid budgets.
According to the OECD’s figures, overseas development assistance to the least-developed countries fell by 3% in real terms from 2017, aid to Africa fell by 4%, and humanitarian aid fell by 8%. It was described by the organisation’s head, Angel Gurría, as a “worrying picture” of stagnating public aid that showed that “donor countries are not living up to their 2015 pledge to ramp up development finance”.
Every year the UN and humanitarian organisations work together to launch appeals based on needs assessments in countries affected by crises. This year, $26bn (£20.7bn) is required to provide relief for around 94 million people in need.
So far, donor countries have contributed approximately $7bn, according to the UN’s financial tracking service. This is about $2bn less than the funding received halfway into 2018.
As well as the drops in aid funding related to the refugee crisis, aid contributions have been hit by the retreat from the Trump administration from funding some operations, and also from a growing sense of donor fatigue in some areas, including the UK.
Figures released in December in a report by the Center for Global Development showed that the UK government had dropped from third place to 15th in a ranking of the 27 biggest funders, in data for all official development assistance spent by all government departments, not just the Department for International Development.
“Let’s not be fooled into believing that the amount needed is too high or the job too difficult,” added Egeland.
“It is a question of priorities. The world’s total military expenditure has increased to a whopping $1.8tn. The cost of closing the humanitarian funding gap and providing people with basic support equals to just about 1% of this,” said Egeland.
The crisis in Cameroon is among the most critically under-funded, with less than 20% of the appeal covered so far this year. Assistance is also falling short for people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country struck by a toxic cocktail of conflict, mass displacement and Ebola. Even funding for Syrian refugees is drying up.
“We used to work as traders. Now we do not even have enough money to send all our children to school. We want more livelihood opportunities, so that we can support our families,” said Adjana Mohamed, one of many people who have fled from Boko Haram in Nigeria, and found safety north in Cameroon.
The current funding crisis is due to a combination of more protracted and longer-lasting humanitarian crises globally and the emergence of more self-interested policies in several rich countries.
“Today many people hit by conflict, drought and starvation do not receive any assistance at all,” said Egeland. “Mothers are skipping meals to provide their malnourished children with whatever little food is available. Lack of proper latrines leads to the spread of water-borne diseases like cholera. And treatable illnesses are claiming lives due to the lack of medical support. All of this is fully preventable if there was political will.”