Ukraine: Over 10,000 civilians have been killed since Russia’s full-scale invasion (Photo: Image Bank of War in Ukraine)
Our world is increasingly at war — and the most vulnerable are paying the price.
Last year, we witnessed the highest number of conflicts since the end of WWII. This worrying trend has soared in recent years, anchoring conflict as the main driver of humanitarian needs globally. In addition, these conflicts are becoming more protracted and complex.
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Climate change is causing ever-more frequent wildfires in Europe (Photo: Unsplash)
The terrible consequences of this can be seen most vividly in Gaza, where already more children have been killed than in all conflict zones since 2019.
Meanwhile, over 10,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed since Russia’s full-scale invasion. These are just two of the many human tragedies currently taking place, most of them away from public attention.
On top of these brutal developments, the worsening climate crisis continues to exacerbate the global humanitarian situation — driving vulnerable communities even deeper into instability and suffering.
Today, around 300 million people need humanitarian assistance. If this number constituted a country, it would be the fourth largest globally.
As these figures rise those already in need are increasingly being forgotten, with funding for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh or for girls deprived of human rights in Afghanistan being thinly stretched or even neglected altogether as politics and the media move on to more recent emergencies.
From Venezuela to Yemen, the number of people going hungry has grown by over 120 million in just three years — equivalent to over a quarter of the European Union’s population. And millions of children are left without education, denied basic rights like food and even recruited by armed groups.
Yet at the very moment when humanitarian aid is needed most, the global response is nowhere near enough.
Today, the gap between humanitarian needs and available funding is wider than it has ever been, with calls for support continuing to rely heavily on a disturbingly narrow international donor base.
Top donors
Last year, over 90 percent of total global contributions came from just 20 donors, with the top three donors — including the European Commission — providing nearly 60 percent of globally available humanitarian funding.
Alongside the European Commission, four of the top 10 global donors are EU member states: Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and France. Together the Commission and these four countries contribute nearly 90 percent of Europe’s total humanitarian funding.
In 2023, the EU took a major step towards increasing its collective contribution by establishing a voluntary target of 0.07 percent GNI to be allocated for humanitarian aid by member states. Spain has even enshrined this in its national legislation.
For those few actors doing much of the heavy lifting, the stubbornly small donor base is neither sustainable nor fair.
It is unreasonable that Russia and China, two of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — the international body with a primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security — are largely absent from this base.
But in a world of increasing conflict, this should be highly disturbing to all of us.
All other countries who aspire to be global actors, in particular those within the G20, need to do better and contribute to the global humanitarian response in line with their economic weight — because humanitarian aid is a global responsibility that must be shared equitably.
Yet funding is not the only challenge we face.
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Across the world, perpetrators of violence are becoming more brazen in their defiance of international humanitarian law. Last year, more civilian casualties of armed conflict were recorded than in any year since 2010.
It is women and children who most often bear the brunt of this suffering, which is partly due to a recent rise in sexual and gender-based violence across conflict zones. On top of this, humanitarian access to these zones is increasingly being denied and aid workers are in greater danger than ever before.
The EU is one of the strongest advocates for greater respect for international humanitarian law in conflict zones.
Despite these efforts, it will take coordinated and consistent action from across the international community to make a difference: because even wars have rules, and those who violate them must be held accountable.
European Humanitarian Forum
However, humanitarian aid alone will not reverse this rising tide of suffering.
To address and solve crises sustainably, our humanitarian support must be matched with development and peace efforts as the only way to help vulnerable communities break free from the cycle of fragility and aid dependency.
This should also include increased investment in local resilience-building as climate breakdown continues.
Our world today is not in good condition.
In recent years our humanitarian work has become progressively more necessary and difficult. But there is a way forward — and an expectation for us in Europe to do even more. Despite all the challenges faced by Europeans in recent years, the EU’s solidarity for those in need remains undented.
A recent poll showed that more than nine in 10 Europeans believe it is important that the EU funds humanitarian aid activities, while a majority of Europeans believe that humanitarian aid is more efficient when coordinated and provided by the EU.
The first opportunity to answer this demand is next week’s European Humanitarian Forum, co-hosted by the commission and the Belgian EU Council presidency.
On Monday and Tuesday (18 and 19 March), over a thousand representatives from across the humanitarian community, member states and beyond will meet in Brussels to participate in strategic discussions on how to better help people in need and to demonstrate their commitment to closing the funding gap.
As global humanitarian outlook continues to worsen, we cannot look away. We know what we have to do; now it’s time to act.
Source: euobserver.com
