1. Home
  2. Middle East and North Africa
  3. Syria

The week in numbers

Numbers 1-10 - for file use Onegoodbumblebee/Flickr
Introducing a new weekly feature rounding up the key figures in crisis and humanitarian reporting:

23 – Percentage of the UN’s 2015 Syria appeal that has been funded – just $1.06 billion of the $4.53 billion requested. “We are so dangerously low on funding that we risk not being able to meet even the most basic survival needs of millions of people,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres.


21,000,000 – People now in urgent need of food and aid in Yemen, where a Saudi Arabian-led coalition has been bombing and enforcing a naval blockade for over three months. 

 31 – Medical staff quarantined in Sierra Leone after a mother tested positive for Ebola. Guinea also put four villages under a 21-day quarantine as fears of a fresh uptick in the disease grew.

1,000 (at least) – Pakistanis killed by a weeklong heat wave in the Karachi district. Many poor families have little option but to be outside in temperatures reaching 45 degrees Celsius.

63,000 – Asylum-seekers and economic migrants who have arrived in Greece by sea so far this year, overtaking Italy (62,000) for the first time, according to the UN. In a deal reached on Thursday night, European states agreed to “voluntarily” relocate 40,000 asylum seekers from the two countries to elsewhere in the EU over the next two years.

And the good news…

8 – International NGOs delivering desperately needed food, blankets and medical aid to Syria that have finally been granted legal status in Turkey after years of deadlocked applications.

$4,400,000,000 – Amount pledged so far for Nepal reconstruction. Neighbours India and China have made the largest commitment.

200 – Estimated number of Joseph Kony’s fighters who have surrendered to the Ugandan government since 2011 under a government amnesty programme. Kony’s Lords Resistance Army, based between the Central African Republic, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, is now estimated to number only a few hundred fighters, down from a peak of tens of thousands.

5 – The number of cases of Guinea Worm globally so far in 2015. The virtual eradication of the disease, which in 1986 had 3.5 million cases across 20 countries in Africa, was described this week as a great example of a successful global health response.

Share this article

Our ability to deliver compelling, field-based reporting on humanitarian crises rests on a few key principles: deep expertise, an unwavering commitment to amplifying affected voices, and a belief in the power of independent journalism to drive real change.

We need your help to sustain and expand our work. Your donation will support our unique approach to journalism, helping fund everything from field-based investigations to the innovative storytelling that ensures marginalised voices are heard.

Please consider joining our membership programme. Together, we can continue to make a meaningful impact on how the world responds to crises.

Become a member of The New Humanitarian

Support our journalism and become more involved in our community. Help us deliver informative, accessible, independent journalism that you can trust and provides accountability to the millions of people affected by crises worldwide.

Join