Pandemic to Fan Surge in Humanitarian Needs in 2021: UN

The United Nations humanitarian office says the need for assistance has risen to unprecedented levels this year as a result of COVID-19's prediction that an incredible 235 million people will need assistance in 2021.

This comes as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and global threats, including conflict, forced migration and the effects of global warming, reports UNB.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, is expecting a 40% increase in the number of people in need of such assistance in 2021 compared to this year—a sign that the pain, suffering and torment caused by the coronavirus outbreak and other problems could worsen even if hopes for a vaccine increase.

OCHA made the projections in its latest annual Global Humanitarian Overview on Tuesday, saying its hopes to reach 160 million of those people in need will cost $35 billion. That’s more than twice the record $17 billion that donors have provided for the international humanitarian response so far this year — and a target figure that is almost certain to go unmet.

“The picture we’re painting this year is the bleakest and darkest perspective on humanitarian needs we’ve ever set out, and that’s because the pandemic has reaped carnage across the most fragile and vulnerable countries on the planet,” said U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock, who heads OCHA.

“For the first time since the 1990s, extreme poverty is going to increase, life expectancy will fall, the annual death toll from HIV, tuberculosis and malaria is set to double,” he said. “We fear a near doubling in the number of people facing starvation.”

Lowcock had told the U.N. New York briefing on the overview he thinks of the U.N. The appeal is likely to raise a record $20 billion by the end of the year—$2 billion more than last year. But he said the gap between needs and funding and the U.N. is growing. Looks for new players coming to the scene in 2021, including the U.S. President-elect the new administration of Joe Biden.

The United Nations. It aims to reach about two-thirds of those in need, with the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations trying to meet the rest of the population, Lowcock explained.

U.N.  Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that humanitarian aid budgets are now facing dire shortfalls as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to worsen and that extreme poverty has risen for the first time in more than a generation.

“The lives of people in every nation and corner of the world have been upended by the impact of the pandemic,” he said. “Those already living on a knife’s edge are being hit disproportionately hard by rising food prices, falling incomes, interrupted vaccination programs and school closures.”

The overview, which is billed as one of the most comprehensive looks of the world’s humanitarian needs, has put together nearly three dozen individual response plans for a total of 56 “vulnerable” countries.

Lowcock said that the biggest problem is in Yemen, where there is now a danger of "large-scale famine," and said that the main reason for this is the lack of funding from Gulf countries that have been major donors in the past, which has led to cuts in aid and the closure of clinics.

He said the biggest financial request is for the Syrian crisis and its spread to neighboring countries where millions of Syrians have fled to escape the more than nine-year conflict.

OCHA said other countries in need include Afghanistan, Congo, Haiti, Nigeria, South Sudan, Ukraine and Venezuela. Newcomers to this year’s list are Mozambique, where extremist activity has increased in the north, Pakistan and Zimbabwe.

Lowcock said it’s not the pandemic, but its economic impact that’s having the greatest effect on humanitarian needs.

“These all hit the poorest people in the poorest countries hardest of all,” he said. “For the poorest, the hangover from the pandemic will be long and hard.”