REFUGEES FUEL WIDENING OF HUMANITARIAN CHALLENGES
With new conflicts around the world, the refugee crises not only pose humanitarian challenges but also a huge economic challenge. **
By Atique Naqvi, aka Syed Atique Hussain, Boston, United States
As the global economic disparity increases and regional conflicts escalate, the number of people who are affected have increased 240 percent since 2005.
The United Nations have a broad category where Persons of Concern, include refugees, asylum seekers, internally-displaced. In 2005, the number of persons of concern was just over 20 million, and by mid-2017 that number has increased to around 69 million.
The humanitarian crises have worsened in 2017, with new conflicts in Myanmar. From August 2017 until the first week of December about 600,000 Rohingyas have crossed into Bangladesh from Myanmar fearing alleged prosecution from state-backed extremist Buddhist groups.
Also, Syria and parts of northern Iraq continue to face life-threatening scenarios in the aftermath of ISIS misadventures. According to the United Nations statistics, Asia, Africa, parts of Europe and Latin America are the areas of concerned where people are facing direct or indirect repercussions of economic and conflict-led displacement.
There are 7.4 million persons of concern in Colombia, followed by Syria (7.1 million), Iraq (5.3 million), Democratic Republic of Congo (3.3 million), Yemen (3.2 million), Turkey (3.1 million), Nigeria (2.9 million), South Sudan (2.8 million), Sudan (2.7 million), Pakistan (2.5 million), Afghanistan (2.3 million), Ukraine (1.8 million), Myanmar (1.3 million) and Germany (1.2 million), says the United Nations Refugee Agency.
The UN released a report in September 2017 saying that by the end of 2016, 65.6 million individuals were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations. That was an increase of 300,000 people over the previous year, and the world’s forcibly displaced population remained at a record high, it says, adding: “There were 20 displacements every minute”.
Over the past two decades, the global population of forcibly displaced people has grown substantially from 33.9 million in 1997 to 65.6 million in 2016, and it remains at a record high.
The UN says that most of this increase was concentrated between 2012 and 2015, driven mainly by the Syrian conflict. But this rise also was due to other conflicts in the region such as in Iraq and Yemen, as well as in sub-Saharan Africa including Burundi, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, and Sudan. The increase of recent years has led to a major increase in displacement: from about 1 in 160 people a decade ago to 1 in 113 today.
Although still at a record high at the end of 2016, the growth in the number of people who have been forcibly displaced has slowed for the first time in recent years. However, large numbers of people were on the move in 2016 and affected by forced displacement, with many people newly displaced as well as large numbers of returning refugees and IDPs, or internally displaced persons. During the year, 10.3 million people were newly displaced, including 3.4 million who sought protection abroad and 6.9 million people who were forced to flee but remained in their own countries. These 10.3 million new displacements equated to an average of 20 people being newly displaced every minute of every day in 2016, says the UN.
Besides the United Nations, there are several organizations around the world who have been working on different aspects of humanitarian aid. One such company is Gee Square. It is a UN-approved vendor at Level 2, supplying emergency one-stop humanitarian aid and development solutions to various international relief agencies such as FAO, UNICEF, UNMISS, ACTED, UNRWA, UNHCR, UNIFIL, and WFP.
Whether it’s conflict-hit Syria, Iraq or Myanmar, there are huge risks involved in the delivery of humanitarian aid.
In December 2017, the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) hosted its annual high-level pledging conference for 2018. Thirty-six donors pledged US$383 million to the Fund to ensure urgent humanitarian aid reaches people in need whenever and wherever crises hit. CERF also reached a record high income of $504 million for 2017 through additional commitments made by donors.
“CERF is a collective achievement that we all can be proud of,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres in his opening remarks at the conference. “CERF is always the first to come when we have an emergency and the last to leave when situations are forgotten. A strong United Nations needs a strong CERF”.
Reinforcing the important role CERF plays as a lifeline for people trapped in crises, the Secretary-General announced the allocation of $100 million from the 2017 CERF to nine neglected emergencies where millions of people need urgent humanitarian assistance: Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Haiti, Mali, Pakistan, the Philippines, Tanzania, and Uganda. “In all these crises, CERF funds will enable UN agencies and their partners to carry out essential life-saving activities, and contribute to longer-term resilience and stability,” the Secretary-General said.
In 2018, the United Nations and partners will require $22.5 billion to meet the needs of 91 million people in 26 countries. Given the ever-increasing scale and intensity of emergencies, a more robust CERF is imperative to address the growing needs of affected people. To that end, Member States adopted a United Nations General Assembly resolution, last year, calling for the CERF to be increased to $1 billion by 2018.
Following the Secretary-General’s remarks, a panel discussed the role of CERF in improving the humanitarian community’s ability to assist people affected by conflict and crises. “CERF is unmatched in its speed, global reach, and scale of impact in enabling the humanitarian community to respond to people most in need in crises,” said Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock.
Azerbaijan, Guyana, Iraq, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, UAE were among the donors that announced increased contributions from the previous year.
Meanwhile, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Indonesia, Ireland, the Republic of Korea, Kuwait, Liechtenstein, Mongolia, Myanmar, the Netherlands, Portugal, Qatar, the Russian Federation, Singapore, Spain, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the Belgian Government of Flanders pledged their support.
In particular, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK provided additional contributions for 2017, helping CERF to pass the $500 million mark.
The Oman-based Al Jisr Foundation significantly diversified CERF’s donor base by making a first-time contribution through a generous charitable practice of zakat. This contribution is being made on a multi-year basis.
Established by the UN General Assembly in 2005 as a global fund ‘by all, for all’, CERF is a critical enabler of effective, timely and life-saving humanitarian action, helping front-line partners on the ground to kick-start or reinforce emergency activities. Since its inception, the Fund has assisted hundreds of millions of people with more than $5 billion across 100 countries and territories with the generous and consistent support of its donors.
The logistics firms such as Gee Square will not have to focus not only on the areas of ongoing conflict but also at the regions where massive rebuilding operations are in progress. Both Syria and Iraq have huge opportunities as several bastions of ISIS have fallen. The year 2018 is set to bring rebuilding opportunities for humanitarian logistics firms.
FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES
The United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs predicts that in 2018 conflict will remain the main driver of humanitarian needs, while natural disasters will also cause many people to need emergency aid.
“Overall, more than 135 million people across the world will need humanitarian assistance and protection – and more funding than ever before is required to help them.
“Humanitarian agencies are committed to becoming more effective, efficient and cost-effective in order to respond faster to crises and in ways more attuned to the needs of those they are trying to help.
“In 2018, we will undertake more comprehensive, cross-sectoral and impartial needs assessments and we will contribute to long-term solutions by partnering more closely with development agencies,” says OCHA.
However, the organization has spelled out huge challenges in the coming 12 months. It says, the people in need of aid are 135.7 million, but only 90.9 million people will receive the aid. Also, the total fund requirement is $22.5 billion, and the funded amount stands at $24.2 million, which is 0.1 percent of the total requirement.
COMBATING NATURAL DISASTERS
In the past 12 years, there were 350 weather-related disasters. In the 20 years from 1997 to 2017, flooding made up nearly 50 percent of natural disasters and resulted in 157,000 deaths around the world, says a press statement from Aid and International Development Forum in Washington D.C.
While the unpredictability of natural disasters is often what makes them so devastating, there are preparedness strategies that can keep homes and inhabitants safer.
Natural disasters are hard to predict, but with strong aid and humanitarian relief strategies, governments and organizations will be well-equipped to minimize the outcome of nature’s fury.
Harjeet Singh, global lead on climate change for Action Aid International says the main challenge is that there are “currently no funds set up for loss and damage.” While destructive hurricanes and flooding are likely to become more frequent, especially in countries where infrastructure and emergency-response plans are less developed, the same places will continue to be hit creating a need recover, rebuild and restore.
Industrialized countries are worried that they will be made to pay for the costs of climate damage to support the developing countries. The governments in the developing world are under pressure to face the risk when choosing between prevention and restoring. They lack resources and time and damage recovery can take up years.
Innovative solutions to deliver aid, especially by the private sector firms, will play a significant role in limiting the damage from natural disasters.
** This article first appeared in Unisol magazine (Essel Group Middle East) published by Mediaquest Corp, Dubai, UAE.
By Atique Naqvi, aka Syed Atique Hussain, Boston, United States
 |
| The number of persons of concern is about 70 million by mid-2017. |
As the global economic disparity increases and regional conflicts escalate, the number of people who are affected have increased 240 percent since 2005.
The United Nations have a broad category where Persons of Concern, include refugees, asylum seekers, internally-displaced. In 2005, the number of persons of concern was just over 20 million, and by mid-2017 that number has increased to around 69 million.
The humanitarian crises have worsened in 2017, with new conflicts in Myanmar. From August 2017 until the first week of December about 600,000 Rohingyas have crossed into Bangladesh from Myanmar fearing alleged prosecution from state-backed extremist Buddhist groups.
Also, Syria and parts of northern Iraq continue to face life-threatening scenarios in the aftermath of ISIS misadventures. According to the United Nations statistics, Asia, Africa, parts of Europe and Latin America are the areas of concerned where people are facing direct or indirect repercussions of economic and conflict-led displacement.
There are 7.4 million persons of concern in Colombia, followed by Syria (7.1 million), Iraq (5.3 million), Democratic Republic of Congo (3.3 million), Yemen (3.2 million), Turkey (3.1 million), Nigeria (2.9 million), South Sudan (2.8 million), Sudan (2.7 million), Pakistan (2.5 million), Afghanistan (2.3 million), Ukraine (1.8 million), Myanmar (1.3 million) and Germany (1.2 million), says the United Nations Refugee Agency.
The UN released a report in September 2017 saying that by the end of 2016, 65.6 million individuals were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations. That was an increase of 300,000 people over the previous year, and the world’s forcibly displaced population remained at a record high, it says, adding: “There were 20 displacements every minute”.
Over the past two decades, the global population of forcibly displaced people has grown substantially from 33.9 million in 1997 to 65.6 million in 2016, and it remains at a record high.
The UN says that most of this increase was concentrated between 2012 and 2015, driven mainly by the Syrian conflict. But this rise also was due to other conflicts in the region such as in Iraq and Yemen, as well as in sub-Saharan Africa including Burundi, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, and Sudan. The increase of recent years has led to a major increase in displacement: from about 1 in 160 people a decade ago to 1 in 113 today.
Although still at a record high at the end of 2016, the growth in the number of people who have been forcibly displaced has slowed for the first time in recent years. However, large numbers of people were on the move in 2016 and affected by forced displacement, with many people newly displaced as well as large numbers of returning refugees and IDPs, or internally displaced persons. During the year, 10.3 million people were newly displaced, including 3.4 million who sought protection abroad and 6.9 million people who were forced to flee but remained in their own countries. These 10.3 million new displacements equated to an average of 20 people being newly displaced every minute of every day in 2016, says the UN.
 |
| CERF reached a record high income of $504 million for 2017 through additional commitments made by donors. |
Besides the United Nations, there are several organizations around the world who have been working on different aspects of humanitarian aid. One such company is Gee Square. It is a UN-approved vendor at Level 2, supplying emergency one-stop humanitarian aid and development solutions to various international relief agencies such as FAO, UNICEF, UNMISS, ACTED, UNRWA, UNHCR, UNIFIL, and WFP.
Whether it’s conflict-hit Syria, Iraq or Myanmar, there are huge risks involved in the delivery of humanitarian aid.
In December 2017, the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) hosted its annual high-level pledging conference for 2018. Thirty-six donors pledged US$383 million to the Fund to ensure urgent humanitarian aid reaches people in need whenever and wherever crises hit. CERF also reached a record high income of $504 million for 2017 through additional commitments made by donors.
“CERF is a collective achievement that we all can be proud of,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres in his opening remarks at the conference. “CERF is always the first to come when we have an emergency and the last to leave when situations are forgotten. A strong United Nations needs a strong CERF”.
Reinforcing the important role CERF plays as a lifeline for people trapped in crises, the Secretary-General announced the allocation of $100 million from the 2017 CERF to nine neglected emergencies where millions of people need urgent humanitarian assistance: Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Haiti, Mali, Pakistan, the Philippines, Tanzania, and Uganda. “In all these crises, CERF funds will enable UN agencies and their partners to carry out essential life-saving activities, and contribute to longer-term resilience and stability,” the Secretary-General said.
In 2018, the United Nations and partners will require $22.5 billion to meet the needs of 91 million people in 26 countries. Given the ever-increasing scale and intensity of emergencies, a more robust CERF is imperative to address the growing needs of affected people. To that end, Member States adopted a United Nations General Assembly resolution, last year, calling for the CERF to be increased to $1 billion by 2018.
Following the Secretary-General’s remarks, a panel discussed the role of CERF in improving the humanitarian community’s ability to assist people affected by conflict and crises. “CERF is unmatched in its speed, global reach, and scale of impact in enabling the humanitarian community to respond to people most in need in crises,” said Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock.
Azerbaijan, Guyana, Iraq, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, UAE were among the donors that announced increased contributions from the previous year.
Meanwhile, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Indonesia, Ireland, the Republic of Korea, Kuwait, Liechtenstein, Mongolia, Myanmar, the Netherlands, Portugal, Qatar, the Russian Federation, Singapore, Spain, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the Belgian Government of Flanders pledged their support.
In particular, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK provided additional contributions for 2017, helping CERF to pass the $500 million mark.
The Oman-based Al Jisr Foundation significantly diversified CERF’s donor base by making a first-time contribution through a generous charitable practice of zakat. This contribution is being made on a multi-year basis.
Established by the UN General Assembly in 2005 as a global fund ‘by all, for all’, CERF is a critical enabler of effective, timely and life-saving humanitarian action, helping front-line partners on the ground to kick-start or reinforce emergency activities. Since its inception, the Fund has assisted hundreds of millions of people with more than $5 billion across 100 countries and territories with the generous and consistent support of its donors.
The logistics firms such as Gee Square will not have to focus not only on the areas of ongoing conflict but also at the regions where massive rebuilding operations are in progress. Both Syria and Iraq have huge opportunities as several bastions of ISIS have fallen. The year 2018 is set to bring rebuilding opportunities for humanitarian logistics firms.
FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES
The United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs predicts that in 2018 conflict will remain the main driver of humanitarian needs, while natural disasters will also cause many people to need emergency aid.
“Overall, more than 135 million people across the world will need humanitarian assistance and protection – and more funding than ever before is required to help them.
“Humanitarian agencies are committed to becoming more effective, efficient and cost-effective in order to respond faster to crises and in ways more attuned to the needs of those they are trying to help.
“In 2018, we will undertake more comprehensive, cross-sectoral and impartial needs assessments and we will contribute to long-term solutions by partnering more closely with development agencies,” says OCHA.
However, the organization has spelled out huge challenges in the coming 12 months. It says, the people in need of aid are 135.7 million, but only 90.9 million people will receive the aid. Also, the total fund requirement is $22.5 billion, and the funded amount stands at $24.2 million, which is 0.1 percent of the total requirement.
COMBATING NATURAL DISASTERS
In the past 12 years, there were 350 weather-related disasters. In the 20 years from 1997 to 2017, flooding made up nearly 50 percent of natural disasters and resulted in 157,000 deaths around the world, says a press statement from Aid and International Development Forum in Washington D.C.
While the unpredictability of natural disasters is often what makes them so devastating, there are preparedness strategies that can keep homes and inhabitants safer.
Natural disasters are hard to predict, but with strong aid and humanitarian relief strategies, governments and organizations will be well-equipped to minimize the outcome of nature’s fury.
Harjeet Singh, global lead on climate change for Action Aid International says the main challenge is that there are “currently no funds set up for loss and damage.” While destructive hurricanes and flooding are likely to become more frequent, especially in countries where infrastructure and emergency-response plans are less developed, the same places will continue to be hit creating a need recover, rebuild and restore.
Industrialized countries are worried that they will be made to pay for the costs of climate damage to support the developing countries. The governments in the developing world are under pressure to face the risk when choosing between prevention and restoring. They lack resources and time and damage recovery can take up years.
Innovative solutions to deliver aid, especially by the private sector firms, will play a significant role in limiting the damage from natural disasters.
** This article first appeared in Unisol magazine (Essel Group Middle East) published by Mediaquest Corp, Dubai, UAE.
Comments
Post a Comment