The admirable trend and culture of proactive global humanitarian support for countries hit with large-scale natural disasters is at risk. The most recent case in point is Türkiye (and Syria), where a month ago massive earthquakes and aftershocks levelled buildings, killed more than 50,000 people and affected more than 10 million. On February 16, the UN issued a ‘flash appeal’ of $1 billion to help local and global aid organizations to complement the Turkish government’s search, recovery and humanitarian response.
A month since the humanitarian catastrophe struck Türkiye, less than 10 percent ($97 million) of the UN’s ask could be mobilized, as per latest data from the United Nation Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Another UN flash appeal for Syria – asking some $400 million from the world – fared better, considering pre-existing humanitarian crisis engulfing that country. However, even the Syria appeal remains 48 percent unfunded to date, according to data from the OCHA. (Having said that, search-and-rescue missions and logistical support from dozens of countries has been impressive).
This situation has led to calls by the empathetic UN leadership for the global donor community to step up and financially help the government and non-government organizations taking part in post-disaster response. Facing colossal losses after the monsoonal floods last summer, Pakistan’s government can relate with huge shortfalls in funding from global donors, despite the UN Secretary General’s visit to flood-hit areas at the height of the crisis late-August and subsequent government appeals at UNGA sessions.
More than six months after the launch of $816 million worth of UN’s appeals for Pakistan’s Flood Response Plan, $429 million, or 53 percent of the UN’s ask, could be raised thus far, as per the latest appeals data from the OCHA. The global donors’ conference that took place earlier this year in Geneva promised roughly $10 billon in assistance (mostly loans) to help finance post-floods rehabilitation and reconstruction. But thus far, there have barely been any major developments on the expected funding.
Post-pandemic, experts have warned that several factors risk a steady flow of global philanthropic capital to parts of the world that need it the most. There is the obvious fiscal hangover of Covid-era stimuli that has weakened several advanced economies through high inflation and steep borrowing rates. Facing high debts and calls for reduced spending, rich-donor countriesare seeing contraction in the discretionary funding pie, part of which goes towards global development and humanitarian assistance. As Covid-19 has laid bare inequalities within developed countries, politicians are keen to focus first at home.
A bit of geopolitics may also be inadvertently playing a role in humanitarian calls going unanswered. The ongoing Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, with all its strategic implications for the West, has consumed global attention for over a year now. The loss of lives, human displacement and infrastructure destruction in Ukraine has been devastating. The US and other OECD countries – which have traditionally been at forefront of global humanitarian response with large aid packages –find themselves locked into open-ended, expensive commitments to assist the Ukrainian people and military until the end.
As a result, the demands on the global-aid pie are likely to become more acute. Aid flows may also be affected by ‘great power competition,’ as tensions rise between the West (mainly the US) and the East (mainly China and Russia), with developing countries increasingly finding themselves caught in the middle. In this environment, the low-income and poor countries seem to be pretty much on their own, despite the significant moral and logistical support offered by the UN and associated aid organizations.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.