A record 168 million people around the world will need humanitarian assistance and protection next year, according to estimates in the UN’s Global Humanitarian Overview.
UN emergency relief chief Mark Lowcock said that the figure marked a “record in the modern era” and that needs were on the rise largely because of increasingly intense and protracted conflicts and extreme weather events unleashed by climate change.
The UN and its partner organizations are appealing for nearly US$29 billion in funding to assist 109 million of the most vulnerable people.
Yemen is expected to remain the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, while Venezuela is the country where needs have increased the most in the past year.
Lowcock highlighted combatants’ growing disregard for international humanitarian law, resulting in record numbers of children being killed and maimed and a rise in attacks on schools, health facilities and aid workers.
Climatic shocks, large infectious disease outbreaks and intensifying, protracted conflicts, have resulted in global needs increasing by some 22 million people in the past year, Lowcock told journalists in Geneva, at the launch of the UN humanitarian affairs coordination office’s (OCHA) Global Humanitarian Overview.
More communities had been affected by conflict and yet more “were affected by climate change-related events than we had projected”, Mr. Lowcock insisted, in reference to more frequent drought, flooding and tropical cyclones that tend to disproportionately affect the poor and vulnerable.
“Thirteen of the 20 countries most vulnerable to climate change are places in which we have an inter-agency appeal,” he noted.
