A record 274 million people will need humanitarian aid in 2022 — a year-over-year increase of 17% — according to a new United Nations report. But international donors have a history of not providing the required funds.
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The “Global Humanitarian Overview,” released Thursday, said international donors provided only $17.2 billion in 2021 — less than half of the $37.7 billion that was needed. The report said $41 billion will be required in the coming year, but a top official at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which publishes the document, said a similar shortfall is anticipated.
As a result of the report’s findings, 120 civil society organizations — including nearly 100 based in countries significantly affected by hunger, according to a press release — have written a joint letter urging world leaders to fully fund relief efforts in 2022.
OCHA said the high levels of need are a result of global conflict, the climate crisis, and COVID-19, as well as the pandemic’s resulting financial shocks.
“We’re looking at a state of global affairs that the world has never seen,” Reena Ghelani, director of the operations and advocacy division at OCHA, told Devex. “Before the [COVID-19] crisis hit, we were looking at 130 million people needing assistance. Now we’re going to be asking for $41 billion ... just to keep people alive. That’s double what we needed before the pandemic.”
She said 45 million people are now on the brink of famine.
“Five years ago, we had all but rid the world of famine,” Ghelani said. “Now we’re facing a catastrophe.”
World leaders need to understand that a failure to properly fund a humanitarian response is likely to be much more expensive down the line, as they deal with the consequences of conflict and migration, she said.
“We need big development actors to be more involved in stopping humanitarian crises,” Ghelani said. “We need ... international financial institutions to come forward.”
About the author
David Ainsworth@daveainsworth4
David Ainsworth is business editor at Devex, where he writes about finance and funding issues for development institutions. He was previously a senior writer and editor for magazines specializing in nonprofits in the U.K. and worked as a policy and communications specialist in the nonprofit sector for a number of years. His team specializes in understanding reports and data and what it teaches us about how development functions.
