From GHA Report 2017 - via Development Initiatives
CAIRO – 21 June 2017: Despite international humanitarian aid reaching $27.3 billion in 2016, many donors in the Middle East cut their humanitarian contributions, according to the annual Global Humanitarian Assistance (GHA) report.
The GHA report for 2017 was published on Wednesday by Development Initiatives (DI), an independent international NGO.
The report shows that Kuwait's contributions were down 50 percent and Saudi Arabia's down 26 percent.
According to the report, international humanitarian assistance increased by 6 percent since 2015. However, the year-over-year growth percentage is lower than recent years. The report adds that the factor behind this slowdown may be the absence of abrupt large scale disasters like the Nepal earthquake in 2014 or the West African Ebola epidemic.
An estimated 164.2 million people affected by new and ongoing crises in 47 countries were in need of international humanitarian assistance in 2016. Over a quarter of them were in three Arab countries – Yemen, Syria and Iraq.
International humanitarian assistance went to 145 countries in 2015, with 60 percent of this assistance going 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.
U.N.-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 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 the previous year.
The 2017 report comes one year after the World Humanitarian Summit in 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 the 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.
DI has been publishing GHA reports since 2000. In 2013, they launched their first Investments to End Poverty report. In 2015 they launched their Development Data Hub.
DI is funded by private foundations, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Omidyar Network, as well as national governments including Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden and the U.K.
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