By IRNA,
Tehran : United Nations agencies and their partners are facing a nearly $5 billion shortfall this year in responding to humanitarian crises spanning the globe, it was announced Wednesday.
The appeals to help 53 million people in 34 countries – amounting to a total of $9.5 billion – are so far only nearly half funded. The inflow of resources for 2010 is only lagging slightly behind that of recent years, despite earlier fears that the global recession would sap resources earmarked for disasters, a press release issued by the UN Information Center (UNIC) here on Thursday said.
“Maintaining humanitarian aid budgets this year in the face of recession and budgets has been a real achievement by many donors,” John Holmes, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, said at yesterday’s launch of the Humanitarian Appeal Mid-Year Review for 2010.
“We now ask you to persist in this effort to ensure that people struck by disaster or conflict receive the help they need for the rest of the year to stay alive, avoid recoverable harm, and restore dignity and basic self-sufficiency,” he added in his address to member states at UN Headquarters in New York.
It had also been feared that the major donations to Haiti following the catastrophic January earthquake would affect funding for other crises, but the effect was slight.
Holmes, who visited the impoverished Caribbean nation just Tuesday, said that he saw first-hand “that further significant sums are needed to continue meeting humanitarian needs sufficiently through 2010,” pointing to such challenges as upgrading shelter for 1.5 million people.
The original global 2010 appeals, launched last November, sought $7.1 billion, but that figure has climbed to $9.5 billion due to new crises, such as the Haiti earthquake. Also contributing to the increase are deteriorating situations in areas such as the Central African Republic (CAR) and the Sahel, especially Niger, which is in the throes of a severe and large-scale food crisis.
Among the individual appeals that have received the greatest proportion of funding are Haiti, where 64 per cent of the nearly $1.5 billion needed has been received; Afghanistan, which has received 62 per cent of the $77 million called for; and Somalia, with 56 per cent of the $60 million needed.
But an $18 million appeal for Mongolia is only 10 per cent funded so far. The Asian nation has been hard hit by a dzud, a complex, natural disaster in which a summer drought is followed by heavy snowfalls and unusually low temperatures in winter, and then by a dangerous spring thaw.
So far, the livelihoods of nearly 9,000 Mongolian families – who rely on their livestock for income, food and fuel – have been destroyed. More than 7.5 million animals, over 17 per cent of the country’s total livestock head, have died, according to humanitarian agencies.