Amazing: $1000 billion cruelly spent on wars, weapon-piles, but $100 billion can't be spared to save lives
The United Nations warned on February 6 that two states in Sudan (South Kordofan and Blue Nile) were on the brink of catastrophe after a recent eruption of violence. UN resident and humanitarian coordinator C. Nkweta-Salami said, “I condemn the reported use of women and children as shields in Kadugil, the obstruction of humanitarian aid and the detention of civilians including children.”
Around the same time, the situation in parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo has deteriorated particularly in the areas where rebel groups assisted by a neighboring country Rwanda are active. While the lure of gaining control over precious minerals continues to be an important factor in escalating violence here as well as in Sudan, the role of foreign countries and weapons supplied by them has worsened the situation.
While about 50 conflicts are raging in the world, due to the sheer numbers involved, the deteriorating situation in parts of Sudan and Congo may outpace whatever gains have been achieved by the ceasefire in Gaza, and here we must also emphasize that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza continues to be extremely severe even after the ceasefire and is likely to remain so for a considerable period of time. The civil war or situation resembling civil war is also worsening in some other countries like Myanmar.
Meanwhile two other factors have added to the worsening humanitarian situation. Firstly, there is the sudden stoppage of USAID funds. While some components of USAID funding certainly needed a review, the funding related to humanitarian aid should not have stopped suddenly. Secondly, the increasing number of humanitarian aid workers and medical personnel who have been targeted and even killed in recent times, particularly in Gaza, has made it more difficult to ensure that humanitarian aid can reach some of the worst affected conflict zones.
Data available for recent times has shown that the availability of funds for urgently needed humanitarian aid at world level has been woefully short of real needs, perhaps even to the extent of about 90 per cent or so.
In its update published on May 31, 2024 (Global Humanitarian Overview or GHO) the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) stated that population in need of humanitarian assistance at world level in year 2024 was 308 million. However keeping in view the fund constraints OCHA was targeting only 187 million people needing humanitarian assistance in 71 countries. For this OCHA needed funds amounting to 48.6 billion dollars in 2024. However up to May 2024 it had received only 7.8 billion dollars. Hence the gap was about 40.6 billion dollars (48.6 minus 7.8).
By the end of June the amount raised had risen to about 9 billion dollars. In other words only about 18 per cent of funds needed were available, leaving a gap of about 82 per cent.
However while examining this number please keep in mind that OCHA was targeting only 187 million people out of the 308 people in need. If all the people in need are considered, then the available funds by mid-year in 2024 would have equaled only 10 per cent of what was needed, or perhaps even less. This kind of precarious funding situation, which has got worse in recent days, makes advance planning difficult and it becomes more difficult to ensure that humanitarian help can reach the people in need of this before it is too late.
This is an amazing reflection of the kind of world we are living in, where over a thousand billion dollars are being thoughtlessly, in fact cruelly, spent on prolonging horrible wars and weapon-piles but a hundred billion dollars cannot be spared for saving highly endangered human lives, including children and expectant or breastfeeding mothers, in the worst affected humanitarian crisis areas.
Of course there is spending other than the one mobilized by OCHA or outside its network on humanitarian assistance, but then there are also many other people needing help due to extreme hunger, deprivation and insecurity who are left out in the OCHA estimate. Even if all data are included, the conclusion is inescapable that the overwhelming majority of the people who need urgent humanitarian help are not getting this, or else what they are getting falls fall short of their needs.
In addition whatever little help is available is not being distributed equally. Urgent needs of millions of people are being neglected to a horrible extent. This includes people of several countries like Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, Myanmar and Afghanistan which are not on the priority lists of main donor countries.
The conditions are so alarming in several places that several refugees and displaced people, who have been denied help needed to survive, are returning to home places amidst continuing conditions of high insecurity and may be killed.
Clearly there is very urgent need for raising humanitarian aid funds at least to the levels targeted by OCHA, while remembering that these are only modest targets and are not adequate for meeting humanitarian needs. Next year higher targets should be set and these should be met. In addition there is great urgency of ending various conflicts as early as possible. The number of conflicts has increased in recent times and higher numbers of people are caught in them. Conflicts are also getting more prolonged than before and possibilities of peace agreements for ending wars and conflicts have been significantly reduced. This is a very important cause of the increasing number of people needing humanitarian assistance. In addition, apart from the shortage of funding, conflicts also create conditions in which it becomes more difficult to take relief to people caught in conflicts.
Even after several conflicts end, in view of the devastation caused by them, need for humanitarian assistance in these regions will continue. Hence clearly two of the world’s biggest priorities should be to bring very early peace in various conflict zones and to raise the funds needed to provide humanitarian assistance in adequate ways. In fact even without conflicts more extreme and uncertain weather conditions are leading to increasing problems and crisis situations for people, and in fact this should be a time for quickly ending conflicts ad establishing conditions of durable peace and cooperation. To have increasing conflicts at such a time is an invitation for disaster, an avoidable disaster that can still be prevented if the forces of peace and can get together to make this possible.
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The writer is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Protecting Earth for Children, Planet in Peril, A Day in 2071, and India’s Quest for Sustainable Farming and Healthy Food
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