The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Monday launched a 29 billion dollar “survival appeal” to address urgent global needs amidst severe cuts in humanitarian aid.
UN relief chief, Tom Fletcher, expressed deep concern that the agency was facing the most severe funding shortfall in the history of humanitarian response.
Fletcher stated that the appeal targets 180 million vulnerable people across 70 countries.
“We have been forced into a triage of human survival,” Fletcher said, adding that “the math is cruel, and the consequences are heartbreaking. Too many people will not get the support they need, but we will save as many lives as we can with the resources we are given.”
He explained that the “hyper-prioritised” appeal aims to revise individual country plans in pursuit of two main goals: first, to reach people and places with the most urgent humanitarian needs; and second, to prioritise life-saving support based on existing plans for the 2025 humanitarian response.
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This approach is intended to ensure that limited resources are directed where they can have the greatest impact, as quickly as possible.
According to OCHA, rather than restricting life-saving aid to a pre-determined framework, humanitarian partners are focusing on addressing the most urgent needs in ways that uphold the dignity of affected people.
This approach, the agency stressed, would enable those affected to choose what they need most.
“Brutal funding cuts leave us with brutal choices,” Fletcher said, adding, “All we ask is one per cent of what you chose to spend last year on war. But this isn’t just an appeal for money, it’s a call for global responsibility, for human solidarity, for a commitment to end the suffering.”
December 2024, OCHA launched the Global Humanitarian Overview (GHO) in Geneva, Switzerland; Kuwait City, in partnership with the Government of Kuwait; and Nairobi, in collaboration with the African Union.
The GHO had called for 44 billion dollars, but OCHA expressed concern that, by the halfway point of the year, less than 13 per cent of that amount had been received.
