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UN Pleads for Humanitarian Funds, Cites Donor Bias - UN Finance - Global Policy Forum
UN Pleads for Humanitarian Funds, Cites Donor Bias
By Thalif Deen
Inter Press Service
June 7, 2002The United Nations lacks nearly two-thirds of the money it needs for humanitarian relief efforts in countries including Angola, Burundi, Guinea, North Korea and Sudan.
"This year, there is concern over a major shortfall in the amount of money being given to meet overall humanitarian needs," says Mark Bowden of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
U.N. agencies with humanitarian operations issue a joint appeal for funds every year. They have pegged this year's level of need at 3.6 billion dollars.
So far, says Bowden, 1.4 billion dollars have been received, leaving a shortfall of 2.2 billion dollars. The situation is the same as last year and marks a continued decline over the past five years, he says, adding that the results are especially worrying for countries faced with drought, epidemics of disease, and famine.
The U.N. humanitarian apparatus appears to be caught in a pincer: On one hand, says Bowden, absolute funding levels are falling and on the other hand, more of the relief that is provided is channeled through bilateral agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), not the United Nations.
"This is creating major problems in emergency situations in countries such as Angola," says Nicolas de Torrente, executive director of Doctors Without Borders (or Medecins Sans Frontieres, MSF). The African nation is experiencing "terrible famine" but the U.N. response has been "very, very slow."
This is partly because "humanitarian needs are being subordinated to political calculations," de Torrente says, noting that, in contrast to Angola's case, the international donor community has moved very fast in responding to appeals made on behalf of Afghanistan.
Bowden says donors so far have covered 48 percent of U.N. agencies' needs in Afghanistan, the highest level of any country in the current round of fundraising. "The success of the Afghanistan appeal, to some extent, had been to the detriment of other appeals," he says.
Some U.N. officials also interpret the response for Afghanistan as primarily political because donors are moving to shore up an Interim Administration installed by a U.S.-led coalition.
"If you do their political bidding," says one U.N. official, "the donors are more than willing to meet your needs."
U.N. operations in Angola have received 24 percent of the funds they sought and those in Sudan, about 18 percent, officials here say. In Guinea, they blame a lack of funds for a failure to put a dent in epidemics of cholera and measles. Lack of medicine and food is hampering U.N. capacity to deal with famine in North Korea.
The U.N.'s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) is expected to discuss a more equitable distribution of humanitarian funds at its session next month, says Bowden. The trend, he adds, is in the opposite direction. For example:
- The European Commission is diverting money from humanitarian relief into rapid reaction programs, of which relief is but one component. The Commission cut its relief budget by 10 percent last year and is slashing another five percent this year.
- The United States, which remains the major humanitarian donor, has not increased its contributions in the last five years.
- Major donors have not only reduced giving but have resorted to what Bowden calls "cherry picking": choosing which part of the U.N. joint appeal they wish to fund.
More than 50 million people worldwide need humanitarian aid, officials here say. Between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s, the number of humanitarian crises escalated: from an average of about 20-25 to about 65-70 per year and the number of people affected rose disproportionately.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has estimated that the number of persons involved in humanitarian emergencies is increasing by more than 10 million every year.
De Torrente said his Paris-based organization, which has an annual budget of about 320 million dollars, was not affected by the cash crunch because it gets only 20 percent of its funds from governments and the rest, from private donors.
In a joint study on humanitarian emergencies released two years ago, the U.N. University's World Institute for Development Economics Research in Finland and the International Development Centre at Oxford University in Britain said humanitarian emergencies represent "a phenomenon which has become perhaps the most serious threat to human security in the present world."
The study cited 22 countries plagued by military conflicts and "complex humanitarian emergencies." These countries included Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Bosnia, Colombia, El Salvador Ethiopia, Liberia, Peru, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan and Uganda.
It estimated that the total number of people dying in the peak years of 1992-1994 in the 22 "most murderous countries in the world" ranged from half a million in Rwanda (1994) and 100,000 each in Angola (1994), Burundi (1993) and Mozambique (1992).
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