The number of people in need of assistance rose by a staggering 33% from the year before, going from 306 million people in 2021 to 406.6 million in 2022, the 2023 Global Humanitarian Assistance Report revealed. However, both of these figures are in sharp contrast to 2020, when a record 443.8 million people were in need, with 200.3 million of those having been assessed as being in need of assistance solely due to Covid-19.
The report published on June 20, 2023, by Development Initiatives, pointed out that approximately 49% of the people in need of assistance in 2022 were children under the age of 18, or 90 million people. The info might not be complete as data on gender and age is available for just a third of UN-coordinated appeals.
Source: Global Humanitarian Assistance Report
Furthermore, 52% of all the people in need were located in just 10 countries, most of which are suffering from protracted crises. On top of this, the number of people experiencing food insecurity has more than doubled in the past three years, with an estimated 265 million people facing crisis-level food insecurity in 2022, compared to just 115 million people in 2019.
Source: Global Humanitarian Assistance Report
More humanitarian aid
On the brighter side, international humanitarian assistance rose by 27% in 2022 compared to the year before, rising to $46.9 billion. Of this $38.1 billion came from government and multilateral institutions and $8.8 billion from the private sector. According to the Global Humanitarian Assistance Report, the significant jump in funding in 2022 came from “strong donor solidarity with Ukraine,” while, at the same time, international appeals to address crises in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and Somalia struggled to attract sufficient funding.
Source: Global Humanitarian Assistance Report
Indeed, Ukraine was the single largest recipient of humanitarian aid funding in 2022, with $4.4 billion, the highest volume of contributions ever recorded for one country in a single year in history. Next on the list were Afghanistan with $3.9 billion, Yemen – $2.7 billion, Syria – $2.5 billon, Ethiopia – $2.1 billion in international humanitarian aid in 2022.
The largest donors of humanitarian aid in 2022 were the United States ($15 billion), Germany ($5.3 billion), the European Union ($4.1 billion), Japan ($2.1 billion), and the United Kingdom ($1.7 billion). The authors of the Global Humanitarian Assistance Report noted that Turkey spent a whopping $7.2 billion on humanitarian aid in 2022, but this was not factored into the report as it was spent domestically, not internationally.
Source: Global Humanitarian Assistance Report
The last key finding from the 2023 Global Humanitarian Assistance Report was that cash and voucher transfers increased by a record volume in 2022, jumping 40% year-on-year to $7.9 billion, with much of that going to Ukraine. The authors of the report also estimated that cash and voucher transfers now account for an estimated 20% of all international humanitarian assistance.
Source: Global Humanitarian Assistance Report
People in need by country
The Global Humanitarian Assistance Report included specific figures on where people in need are located, the top 24 countries being Ethiopia (with 28.5 million people in need), the Democratic Republic of Congo (27 million), Afghanistan (24.4 million), Pakistan (23.6 million), Yemen (23.5 million), Nigeria (19.2 million), Venezuela (18.5 million), Ukraine (17.7 million), Sudan (15.8 million), Syria (14.6 million), Myanmar (14.4 million), South Sudan (12.5 million), Cameroon (11.7 million), North Korea (10.4 million), Somalia (7.8 million), Colombia (7.7 million), Poland (7.6 million), Mali (7.5 million), Zimbabwe (7 million), Sri Lanka (7 million), Chad (6.4 million), Haiti (5.1 million), Kenya (4.9 million), and Bangladesh (4.9 million).
Of the above countries, the authors of the Global Humanitarian Assistance Report estimated that the number of people in need in Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Mali, and Kenya is expected to grow in 2023, with the rest of the countries listed as “stable,” with the exception of Pakistan, Cameroon, and Bangladesh where it is estimated that the number of people in need in 2023 will decrease.
The 2023 Global Humanitarian Assistance Report also noted that six countries have consistently had more than 10 million people in need since 2019: Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. Furthermore, two countries – South Sudan and Yemen – were noteworthy for experiencing emergency-level acute food insecurity on a nationwide basis in 2022.
UN-coordinated appeals vs. assistance delivered
Although the Global Humanitarian Assistance Report recorded a 40% increase in overall international humanitarian aid funding in 2022, this was unable to match an equally large increase in appeals. In 2022, UN-coordinated appeals for humanitarian aid amounted to $52.4 billion, resulting in another year of an ever-increasing shortfalls by volume ($22.1 billion in 2022).
Source: Global Humanitarian Assistance Report
Last year, approximately 58% of all UN-coordinated appeals were funded, a rise compared to 2021 (when just 56% of appeals were funded), but overall a significant decrease since 2019, when 63% of UN-coordinated appeals for funding were being met.
Source: Global Humanitarian Assistance Report
The surge in appeal funding was largely driven by events in Ukraine, which went from $168 million in 2021 in appeals to $4.3 billion in 2022. This increase in appeals for funding was primarily driven by three top donors: the United States, Germany, and the European Union. On balance, almost half (48%) of all funding to all UN-coordinated appeals in 2022 was provided by the United States.
The two UN-coordinated appeals that received the least amount of funding, percentage-wise, in 2022 were the Cholera Flash Appeal in Haiti (<25% met) and the response to Hurricane Ian in Cuba (<25%). The appeals that received the highest volume of funding, percentage-wise, in 2022 were the Ukraine Flash Appeal (85% met), the Afghanistan HRP (73% met), and the Syria 3RP (39% met).
Red Cross/Red Crescent appeals
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement (IFRC) organizes its appeals separately from UN-coordinated appeals. In 2022, IFRC appeals grew by 65% compared to the year previously, with the lion’s share of the increase motivated by the events in Ukraine.
In 2022, IFRC appeals amounted to $2.1 billion, of which $576 million was directed to Ukraine. If funding volumes for Ukraine were excluded, 46% of IFRC appeals were met by donors. However, including Ukraine, 53% of IFRC appeals were funded in 2022.
In-country refugee hosting costs surged in 2022
The crisis in Ukraine led to an enormous increase in the number of refugees hosted by countries that are also donors of international humanitarian assistance, with spending in 2022 on hosting refugees in-country more than doubling in donor nations from the year prior, rising from $12.8 billion in 2021 to $30.1 billion in 2022.
The largest increase in 2022 on in-country hosting was in the United Kingdom, which tripled spending to $4.8 billion, compared to just $1.4 billion the year prior. Other significant increases on in-country hosting were seen in Poland ($17 million in 2021 to $2.3 billion in 2022), Germany ($2.7 billion to $4.8 billion), the United States ($4.7 billion to $6.2 billion), Ireland ($50 million to $1.3 billion), and Italy ($556 million to $1.6 billion).
Other donor countries which experienced enormous jumps on in-country refugee spending included Japan (rising from just $270,000 in 2021 to $61 million in 2022), the Czech Republic ($6.4 million to $640 million), and Lithuania ($1.9 million to $48 million).
The annual Global Humanitarian Assistance Report worked out by the Development Initiatives assesses the financial responses from international organizations and other sources in response to humanitarian crises. Development Initiatives is a global organization dedicated to “harnessing the power of data” in order to end poverty, reduce inequality, and increase resilience. Founded in Great Britain in 1993, DI employs approximately 80 staff and consultants. Their annual Global Humanitarian Assistance Report is funded by the governments of Canada, Denmark, and the Netherlands.
