It will take at least $ 41 billion next year for the United Nations to provide emergency humanitarian assistance to the most vulnerable, in a world plagued by the new coronavirus pandemic and armed conflict, which sweeps away extreme weather events.
In all, some 274 million people will be in urgent need of humanitarian assistance in one form or another in 2022, up 17% from this year, which’s already broken all records, the Organization for Humanitarian Coordination (OCHA) said on Thursday. .
This is one in 29 people in the world.
“The number of people who will need help has never been so high,” Martin Griffiths, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, told a news conference in Geneva.
The agency wants to help vulnerable people in 63 countries next year.
Starvation remains a “frightening prospect” for 45 million people in 43 countries, all the more so as climate change-related extremes are shrinking food supplies.
OCHA’s annual report, released today, includes a long list of tragedies and misery – from Afghanistan to Ethiopia and Myanmar.
The pandemic of the new coronavirus, which is in its third year and has already officially claimed the lives of more than five million people, is actually expected to double to triple, according to the World Health Organization.
The range of famine
The pandemic plunged 20 million people into extreme poverty last year, the OCHA report said.
It has wreaked havoc on many health systems, with a devastating impact on the fight against other epidemics, such as HIV, tuberculosis and malaria. This year, 23 million children could not even get basic vaccines.
After all, global warming and the endless procession of natural disasters it is causing could force 216 million people to seek refuge in other countries by 2050.
It is climate change that makes famine “a real and frightening possibility for 45 million people in 43 countries,” the report said.
“If there is no continuous and immediate action, 2022 can be catastrophic” in a world where 811 million people are already malnourished.
In Afghanistan, the risk is heightened by a combination of decades of war, catastrophic drought and a free fall after the Taliban returned to power in August.
Two-thirds of its population needs help and nine million people are on the brink of starvation. The United Nations estimates it will need $ 4.5 billion to provide assistance to 22 million Afghans next year.
Yemen and Syria, war-torn countries for years, also need help, but Ethiopia’s needs are growing and the UN is increasingly concerned after the federal government in Addis Ababa ordered the army to attack the province of Tigray.
The armed conflict, during which countless atrocities have been reported, has caused the displacement of millions of civilians.
According to the OCHA report, 26 million Ethiopians are dependent on humanitarian aid. Some 400,000 people in this state in the Horn of Africa are heading for starvation.
For Martin Griffiths, Ethiopia is currently experiencing “the most worrying situation”. However, he hastened to add that there are still many very serious crises at the international level.
Mr Griffiths, however, noted some of the UN’s successes, in particular that it had reduced the scale of disasters. In the last year, it has helped 107 million people, 70% of whom it wanted to reach, among the half a million South Sudanese who have been saved from starvation.
Source: ΑΠΕ-ΜΠΕ
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Source From: Capital
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