OCHA Highlights Funding Needs for Crises Preparedness and Prevention
14 February 2014: The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has released a report, titled 'World Humanitarian Data and Trends 2013,' which highlights major trends in humanitarian crises, discusses their underlying causes and drivers, and focuses on the actors that participate in crises prevention, response and recovery.
Listing new challenges facing the humanitarian community, the 2013 report emphasizes that “climate change, population growth, rapid and unplanned urbanization, and food and water insecurity are leaving more and more people at risk of crisis.” The report explains that today's major humanitarian crises are protracted or, when not protracted, recurrent due to climate, conflict and price shocks that affect the most vulnerable populations. Despite this, OCHA underlines that humanitarian assistance still overwhelmingly focuses on response, and development aid often fails to target the most vulnerable, with less than 5% of humanitarian funding and less than 1% of development funding spent on preparedness and prevention.
The report also: covers humanitarian needs and assistance in 2012, and humanitarian trends and analysis; and provides a comprehensive picture of global humanitarian needs and assistance. For example, in 2012, disasters affected 124.5 million people and killed 9,655, and economic losses were higher than average, with Hurricane Sandy being the year's most expensive disaster.
The report emphasizes that development aid must contribute to managing crisis risk, given that increasing needs, the inability to resolve protracted crises, and the interplay of emerging factors such as climate change, are making it more difficult for governments and aid workers to effectively respond to humanitarian challenges.
World Humanitarian Data and Trends, an annual OCHA publication, presents global and country-level data and trends analysis of humanitarian crises and assistance, and provides data in support of policy and operational decisions. OCHA is the part of the UN Secretariat responsible for bringing together humanitarian actors to ensure a coherent response to emergencies. [UN Press Release] [OCHA Webpage on the World Humanitarian data and Trends 2013] [Publication: World Humanitarian Data and Trends 2013]