Humanitarian Assistance in Numbers
Humanitarian financing is in the spotlight now as never before for two reasons:
- the urgent resourcing challenges of meeting the wide and multidimensional needs of more people;
- the unique opportunities to find solutions, in the form of the 2015 and 2016 global processes on risk, development, climate and humanitarian action.
There has never been enough humanitarian funding. Needs have always gone unmet, and the international community has long sought ways to fix this problem. The World Humanitarian Summit is part of this agenda for change, which aims to bring the global community together to commit to new ways of working to make humanitarian action fit for the future.
The challenges ahead are two-fold:
a) How to ensure adequate, timely and appropriate resources to respond to acute and growing levels of need for international humanitarian response? This involves working within the humanitarian system — at international, national and local levels — to improve the mobilisation, targeting, disbursement and transparency of funds and resources from diverse actors. b) How to ensure adequate and appropriate resources to respond to the underlying causes and protracted symptoms and consequences of crises? This implies reaching out beyond the traditional humanitarian sector to address the barriers and gaps in all resources to improve the lives of those vulnerable to and affected by crisis.
GOODdler is set to revolutionize the way humanitarian and disaster relief aid is distributed. It engages local players to the max, providing an effective way for non-cash aid to be delivered to those in need. Think about it!
There is no reason for basic goods or food to help victims of a disaster, let’s say of an earthquake in Nepal, to be shipped all the way from the United States or Europe, while local retailers, having all the necessary items available for sale, see a decline in business during this difficult time.
Gooddler offers a solution that not only makes a distribution of basic goods in the disaster areas effective and efficient, but also empowers local communities.
2014: Record funding, but with a high shortfall
A record US$10. 8 billion was channelled through UN-coordinated appeals in 2014. However, given the severity of needs last year — driven both by the number of UN appeals and by their scale and scope (appeals for Syria and neighbouring countries, for example, requested almost US$6 billion) — unmet needs also rose to a high of 40% of the total amount requested in 2014, or US$7.2 billion. The average level of unmet needs from 2003–2014 was 34% (Source: Development Initiatives based on UN OCHA FTS data)
2015: Highest level of requirements to date
The amount requested in 2015 has reached a new record high of US$18.7 billion. Only three months into the year the funding requested for 2015 is already US$0.7 billion higher than the amount requested within the 2014 UN-coordinated appeals. US$18 million was the amount requested at the end of 2014. This amount will continue to increase during the course of the year. As in previous years, it is likely that the amount requested will continue to increase as existing SRPs are revised and new appeals are added. This is, by its nature, unpredictable, but based on an average increase of 39% over the last four years (2011–2014), SRP requirements for 2015 could rise to as high as US$22.8 billion by the end of the year.
