Kate Hodal
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| People wait for humanitarian aid to be distributed outside Mosul in northern Iraq. Photograph: Hadi Mizban/AP |
Growing number – and scale – of crises around the world is not matched by countries’ will to tackle them, experts warn
The United Nations is expected to launch its biggest ever appeal for humanitarian funding amid growing fears that major donors no longer have the political will to address proliferating crises in Yemen, Syria, Nigeria and elsewhere.
The annual appeal, to be launched on Monday against the backdrop of a struggling global economy, a rising tide of nationalist sentiment epitomised by politicians such as Donald Trump, and growing compassion fatigue, will seek to raise roughly $22bn (£17.4bn).
But in recent years, donor countries have failed even to come close to meeting funding requirements. Last year’s $20.1bn appeal – at the time the largest ever made – resulted in a funding shortfall of $10.7bn.
The current number of nations in crisis – coupled with the sheer scope of those crises – means that global resources and funding are in such great demand that one nation, even one crisis, is pitted against another, said Laurence Hart, chief of mission in Afghanistan for the International Organisation for Migration.
“The main issue is the competing humanitarian scenarios that the world is confronting, and that donors are confronting: Afghanistan is just one area, along with South Sudan, Syria, Iraq, and other areas which are also in large need of support,” said Hart.
The number of people in need of aid have increased year on year, with nearly 100 million people targeted for 2017. But last year emergency requests for natural disasters in Haiti, Ecuador and Fiji attained only half their targets. Half of the required humanitarian funds are for four countries alone, including Syria and Iraq, according to the UN.
“Year after year, it just doesn’t get any better, and Syria – which has been going on now for six years and is an ever worsening crisis – is a big part of that,” said Barnaby Willitts-King, senior research fellow in humanitarian policy at the Overseas Development Institute.
“The agencies are really scrambling to see what this [shortfall] means for their programmes, and that means not reaching however many people need to be reached. At the end of the day, if less money is in the pot, that’s got to have some consequences on the ground.”
Politics plays a major part too. The nationalist ideologies gaining ground around the world, and embodied by the likes of Trump, tend to emphasise a charity-begins-at-home approach.
According to the American academic and media pundit Susan Moeller, this is partly because “these crises seem to be intractable … and it’s going to take far more than aid donations of any amount to address”.
“It is too complicated to explain how we are all connected, how what happens in Syria affects you in America,” said Moeller. “So instead, we look for ‘soundbite conversations’: ‘build a wall’ is a three-word applause line. And ‘Have somebody else pay for it,’ means it’s not coming out of your pocket.”
From anti-immigrant rhetoric to a tight budgeting of resources, 2017 would usher in a “new normal” that was likely to create more closely monitored, results-driven funding to the UN system, said Willitts-King. He believes this new framework is more likely to hinge on what is good for the donor country and its national interests than what is beneficial for the greater good.
“The challenge is when you have multiple interests and multiple objectives and competing priorities, who wins and what’s the balance of power?” he said.
“This is the changing feature of politics. We’re looking at not just the UK but other countries. What are donors spending their money on? Are they spending more on certain types of programmes, driven more by their national interests? They may be committed to humanitarian aid, but also to national security, and that’s a huge driver of where they put their aid.”
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