Too little funding too late may cost millions of lives

The United Nations humanitarian chief, Jan Egeland, has issued a strong appeal to the donor community to focus more attention on humanitarian crises across Africa, warning that without a speedy response million of lives will be lost. In a statement to the UN Security Council on Tuesday, Egeland said, "news on the funding front is bad across the board". Of the 14 current appeals for Africa, eight have received less than 20 percent and, with the exception of a small flash appeal for Angola, none has received more than 40 percent, he noted. Donor response to critical humanitarian needs was often inadequate and unpredictable, he added. "Too many people are dying because too little funding is available, or because it arrives too late in the year," commented the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. In 2005 the UN has so far received just 6 percent of the $23.6 million needed for the Central African Republic, 8 percent of the $164.5 million requested for Somalia, 10 percent of the $157 million required in Eritrea and just 22 percent of the $201 million appeal to meet needs in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Egeland, who is also the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), highlighted that although some $4.5 billion was pledged for Sudan at a donor conference in Oslo last month, the UN still faced an immediate shortfall of $350 million for humanitarian needs in Darfur alone, and $900 million for Sudan as a whole. Funding constraints were also severely hampering humanitarian operations in Southern Africa, where consecutive poor harvests have resulted in acute food shortages in a number of countries. The UN World Food Programme's regional operations, which target over 5.5 million beneficiaries in Southern Africa, have received only 15 percent of the necessary funding. OCHA's Chief of the Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP), Toby Lanzer, said the level of funding at this stage in the year was especially worrying. "Donors have traditionally been slow off the mark when it comes to making contributions, but we are now already in the month of May and so far CAP 2005 funding stands at just 24 percent. Without immediate funding, the consequences are dire. Underfunding of programmes means people cannot get fed, the WHO [World Health Organisation] cannot assist people to confront HIV/AIDS, and children will continue to be excluded from going to school," Lanzer explained to IRIN. He added that at a 2003 meeting in Stockholm, donors had said they would aim to provide funding for emergencies earlier, but there had been little progress towards reaching this commitment. "We have planned to follow up with donors," Lanzer said, "to gauge what the problem areas are, and how we can work better to ensure that more funding is provided, especially for critical emergencies."