Donor fatigue affects provision of aid

The United Nations has so far received just 15 percent of its US $289-million appeal for aid programmes – excluding food – in the Great Lakes region for 2002, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported. The $289 million includes a regional appeal for the Great Lakes as well as individual country appeals for the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Republic of Congo, and Uganda. By contrast, the World Food Programme has received over 55 percent of the money it requested, clearly demonstrating donor preference for funding the food sector. "The pitfalls of an over-reliance on food aid have been made in various studies," OCHA said in its mid-year report on the Consolidated Inter-Agency Appeals for 2002. "It has been unequivocally demonstrated that the impact of food assistance on nutrition is significantly limited, unless it is provided along with essential health care, hygiene education and programmes that provide clean water and sanitation," the agency added. It added that the cost of agricultural aid was about one-quarter of the cost of food aid, with the longer-term benefits of food security. Apart from food, natural disasters tend to be funded much better than complex emergency or conflict situations. Donors considered these to be "straightforward, immediate, not the fault of the people involved, and hopefully short-term", an OCHA official told IRIN. Following the eruption of Mt Nyiragongo in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in January, $30 million dollars was raised within two weeks. By contrast, the humanitarian crisis resulting from the war in the DRC has attracted about 21 percent of the $194 million appeal. This figure is reduced to 10 percent, if the food appeal is excluded. "In the context of the DRC, this means that people cannot sustain themselves, because they cannot cultivate, mortality rates - both direct and indirect - are high, there is very little access to health care, epidemics and diseases are spreading, people are not sensitised to the spread of HIV/AIDS, and because of the almost total lack of infrastructure and funding; we cannot even transport humanitarian personnel and assistance," another OCHA official told IRIN. "High profile" emergencies also tend to attract most donor funding: the crisis in Afghanistan has received almost 2.5 times as the entire African continent. "The challenge remains to ensure an equitable response to people in need of humanitarian assistance, regardless of media attention," OCHA reported.