Middle East donors cut humanitarian contributions by 24%: GHA report

CAIRO - 21 June 2017: The annual “Global Humanitarian Assistance report” for 2017 published on Wednesday by Development Initiatives (DI) organization, showed that international humanitarian aid reached $27.3 billion in 2016. However, the report adds that many donors in the Middle East cut their humanitarian contributions.

The report shows that, Kuwait's contributions were down 50 percent and Saudi Arabia's 26 percent.

According to the report, International humanitarian assistance increased by 6 percent since 2015. However, the pace of assistance growth is slow comparing to increases in recent years. The report adds, that the factor behind this slowdown may be the absence of abrupt large scale disasters like the Nepal earthquake 2014 or West African Ebola epidemic.

Data from the Global Humanitarian Assistance Report 2017

An estimated 164.2 million people affected by ongoing and new crises in 47 countries are in need of international humanitarian assistance in 2016. Over a quarter of them were in just three Arab countries – Yemen, Syria and Iraq.

International humanitarian assistance went to 145 countries in 2015. 60 percent of this assistance went to just 10 countries. Data for 2016 shows that more than 54 percent of all crisis-specific humanitarian assistance was concentrated to five large scale crises – Syria, Yemen, Iraq, South Sudan and Ethiopia.

Only 2 percent of international humanitarian assistance in 2016 went directly to local and national responders, and national and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) received just 0.3 percent directly.

UN-coordinated appeals that raise funds to respond to humanitarian crises, rose by 12 percent in 2016, still leaving a 40 percent global shortfall. The gap between the best and worst funded appeals reached 95 percent.

Most international humanitarian assistance continues to come from a small number of donors. Five government donors together, the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden and Japan, contributed almost 65 percent of the total in 2016. The largest humanitarian assistance donor is the United States with almost 31 percent of the total in 2016.

Germany more than doubled its aid. Belgium's contributions were up 58 percent, Denmark 51 percent and France 41 percent.

Poverty, vulnerability and crisis are linked. At least 661 million people are living in extreme poverty. The real number is likely to be much higher due to missing data from vulnerable countries.

Global extreme poverty levels fell, but the proportion of extremely poor people in high-risk settings increased since the previous count. This fact introduces new commitments for joined-up humanitarian, development and peace building approaches.
Funding from private donors increased by an estimated 6 percent in 2016, following a 26 percent rise in the previous year.



The 2017 report comes one year after the World Humanitarian Summit 2016, and serves as a leading resource for understanding humanitarian financing and related aid flows. The GHA report looks in detail at areas requiring resources, main assistance entities, where do these resources go, and how they are delivered. The report also introduces new topics to support the reform of crisis-related funding, including analysis of linkages between poverty and crisis, risks and resources and several commitment areas, such as transparency, localization, earmarking, cash and multi-year funding.

About Development Initiatives organization

DI is an independent international development organization established in 1993, and focuses on the role of data in driving poverty eradication and sustainable development. The organization is based in the United Kingdom with teams in East Africa, South Asia, North America and Latin America. In 2000, the organization published their first Global Humanitarian Assistance Report. In 2013, they launched their first Investments to End Poverty report. Furthermore, in 2015 they launched their Development Data Hub.

The organization is funded by private foundations – including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Omidyar Network – and national governments – including Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK.