The UN is asking the international community for funds worth almost €45 billion to provide critical humanitarian aid to 190 million people by 2025, at a time when “the world is on fire”.
The appeal for donations is made in the traditional “global humanitarian panorama”, which the United Nations publishes in December of each year, with an annual assessment of humanitarian needs worldwide and the resources required to support those most in need, and which will be presented this Wednesday in Geneva by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
According to UN estimates, 305 million people around the world will need humanitarian assistance next year, and the appeal for funds totaling 47 billion dollars (about 44.6 billion euros) is already done based on “carefully prioritized response plans”, which aim to provide crucial aid to 190 million people in 32 countries and nine refugee-hosting regions.
In the “global humanitarian panorama” published this Wednesday, the UN, commenting on the various ongoing crises, argues that “the world is on fire”, as “armed conflicts are intensifying in frequency and brutality”, forcing almost 123 million people to flee their homes, at the same time that “climate-driven catastrophes are devastating communities , devastating food systems and causing mass displacement.”
“Meanwhile, older crises remain unresolved, with the average humanitarian appeal currently stretching back a decade”points out OCHA, headed since November 18th by the British Tom Fletcher, the new United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Aid Coordinator.
According to the global “panorama” drawn up by the UN, the region of Southern and Eastern Africa hosts the largest number of people in need (85 million), with “the catastrophic crisis in Sudan” representing 35 percent of the total in the region, followed by the Middle East and North Africa, where 59 million people need assistance and protection, and Central and West Africa (57 million people in need).
For Mozambique, once again the only Portuguese-speaking African country (PALOP) included in the UN’s annual humanitarian aid plan, OCHA estimates the need for financing of around 485 million dollars (461 million euros), to provide aid to around two million Mozambicans. In 2024, the office points out, when reporting examples of aid provided across the globe in the year now ending, 445,000 women and children in Mozambique will have benefited from nutritional aid.
Indicating that, in Latin America and the Caribbean, 34 million people are in need, including 15 million affected by the crisis in Venezuela, the report also reports on 15 million people who continue to be in need in Europe, due to the ongoing war in Ukraine.
As happened in the previous year, there is a large funding gap for the provision of humanitarian aid, with OCHA emphasizing today that, “despite long-standing donor generosity, funding gaps persist”, pointing out that, “as of November 2024, only 43% of appeals [a doações] of 50 billion dollars [47,5 milhões de euros] for that year had been satisfied”with this underfunding having “very serious consequences”.
The UN points out, however, that “the most important obstacle to the assistance and protection of people in armed conflicts is the widespread violation of international humanitarian law”, stressing that “2024 is already the deadliest year for humanitarian workers”, with that “the vast majority of victims are national aid workers”.
“The suffering behind the numbers is all the more unconscious because it is man-made. The wars in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine are marked by the ferocity and intensity of the killing, the complete disregard for international law and the deliberate obstruction of the efforts of our humanitarian movement to save lives,” said Tom Fletcher, .
“However, despite these challenges, humanitarian agencies reached almost 116 million people in 2024, providing vital services of food, shelter, healthcare, education and protection”, notes OCHA.
