Almost 300 million people will need humanitarian aid and protection in the coming year, an amount greater than the population of all but three countries, but only 60% are targeted for aid from the U.N. and its partners.
The U.N.'s global humanitarian appeal for 2024, which includes the world body and 1,900 organizational partners, will seek US$46 billion to help the most needy 181 million people, U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths announced on Monday, due to what he described as the world budget shortfall in some time.
In 2023, the U.N. received just US$19.9 billion of the US$57 billion it sought to help 245 million in need. Despite the international community's failure to keep pace with the needs, some form of aid – but not all of what was needed – went to 228 million people this year.
"The result is that we will be targeting fewer people in 2024 than in 2023, and we are appealing for less money. This is the first time that this has happened in recent years," Griffiths said.
"And it’s not because there is no need, it is because we have had to prioritize urgent life-saving need as our core business," he said. "We’ve had to make the assumptions to make money efficiently spent, the use of cash, for example."
One child in every five lives in, or has fled from, conflict zones in 2023, said Griffiths' agency, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Some 258 million people face acute hunger, it said, while 1-in-73 people worldwide is displaced, double the number from a decade ago, while disease outbreaks are causing preventable deaths in all corners of the world.
"If we cannot provide more help in 2024, people will pay for it with their lives," said Griffiths, who blamed the soaring needs shared by some 300 million people – greater than the populations of all nations except India, China and the United States – on "new and resurgent conflicts around the world" ranging from Sudan, Syria and Yemen to Gaza and Ukraine.
As many as 10 million people were no longer able to access food aid in Afghanistan between May and November, Griffiths' office highlighted, while more than 500,000 people had inadequate living conditions in Myanmar.
