The United Nations is shifting much of its humanitarian coordination focus away from Asia-Pacific as nations in the world’s most populous — and most vulnerable to natural disasters and the impact of climate change — region become more capable of handling disaster risk preparation and response efforts on their own.
That and trying to manage the reality that finite resources can’t exactly match the increasing humanitarian requirements elsewhere in the world.
This is according to Oliver Lacey-Hall, former Asia-Pacific head and now chief of the Southeast Asian liaison office of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The past 12 months has been a challenging year for humanitarians around the world, according to OCHA’s latest annual report, as the scale and number of emergencies “stretched the international humanitarian system to its limits.”