Seven hundred million U.S. dollars. That is the amount of money that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says it needs by the end of the year to avoid making severe cutbacks in operations. “I regret to inform you that, for the first time during my tenure, I am worried about UNHCR’s financial situation,” agency head Filippo Grandi, who has been in the post since 2016, said at a high-level meeting earlier this week. Funding shortfalls, sadly, are nothing new. But what is different now is the rapid increase in need globally. Responding to war in Ukraine alone—including nearly 7.7 million internationally displaced Ukrainians—added more than $1 billion to UNHCR’s budget this year, Grandi said, bringing it to $10.7 billion overall. Meanwhile the planet is reeling from ongoing economic shocks related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including spiraling inflation and a cost-of-living crisis in several countries, while impacts of climate change become more acute. Lack of money is not an idle budgetary concern. Earlier this year, UNHCR reported that it could not provide adequate shelter, education, and other benefits for large swaths of forcibly displaced people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The humanitarian response to the crisis in the DRC, which rarely makes headlines, is also regularly underfunded; as of September, the agency had just one-third of the $225 million it needed for the country. Indeed, the global public’s short attention span is an issue humanitarian advocates know well. “We cannot pay attention only to the latest crisis at the expense of the rest,” Grandi said this week. “This year is Ukraine. But last year was Afghanistan, where millions, including women, girls, and minorities, continue to need urgent help inside the country and in neighboring Pakistan and Iran. Our operations in Ethiopia were in focus before Afghanistan, and are now just 46 percent funded.” In previous years it was displaced Rohingya people, Syrians, and other who attracted attention. Yet funding tends to fall off when crises fade from the headlines, even though millions continue to languish. The funding gap comes even as UNHCR has increased the amount of money it raises from individuals and private donors, from $421 million in 2019 to more than $1 billion this year. Yet the need keeps rising. Best regards,
Julian Hattem
Editor, Migration Information Source
[email protected] |
