UN refugee chief: funding is not enough 'to cover even the bare minimum'

Last, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees' office received a record $3.3 billion. However, more resources are needed to adequately help millions displaced by war and persecution. 

|
Antonio Bronic/Reuters
Migrants look through windows on a train at a new winter refugee camp in Slavonski Brod, Croatia, Croatia, November 3, 2015. Humanitarian budgets are now not enough "to cover even the bare minimum, and we are starting to see what happens as a result of that," the UN's Antonio Guterres told the General Assembly's human rights committee.

The combined resources of U.N. agencies, the Red Cross and humanitarian organizations are no longer enough to protect the 60 million people displaced by war and persecution around the world, the U.N. refugee chief said Tuesday.

Governments, private citizens, corporations and foundations have provided the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees with a record $3.3 billion last year, Antonio Guterres told the General Assembly's human rights committee. Yet humanitarian budgets aren't enough "to cover even the bare minimum, and we are starting to see what happens as a result of that," he said.

Guterres said "the trigger" for the mass arrival of Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans and Eritreans in the eastern Mediterranean this year "is the humanitarian funding shortfall."

He also cited two longer-term trends: After years in exile most of the four million Syrian refugees in neighboring countries have depleted their savings and lost hope of a political solution to end the nearly five-year conflict.

Currently, Guterres said, 70 percent of Syrian refugees in Lebanon are living in "extreme poverty" and 86 percent in urban areas of Jordan are living below the country's poverty line.

UNHCR has been struggling to provide cash and shelter materials to the growing number of extremely vulnerable families, he said. And earlier this year the U.N. World Food Program was forced to cut their assistance by 30 percent, "which made many refugees feel that the international community was starting to abandon them."

As the refugee and migrant crisis in Europe has escalated, Guterres said, there have been new announcements of financial support to refugees in neighboring countries.

"But as welcome and timely as these additional funds are, they will not address the wide problem organizations like UNHCR are facing," he said.

"There is an urgent imperative to review the way we finance humanitarian response today, because it is clear that humanitarian resources alone are vastly insufficient to respond to the enormous increase in needs which we have seen in recent years in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere," Guterres said.

He said the 34 U.N. appeals to provide humanitarian assistance to 82 million people around the world in desperate need are only 46 percent funded. And UNHCR expects to receive less than half the money it needs this year.

Guterres said 750,000 people have arrived on Europe's shores since January, more than 3,400 have drowned and the death toll is rising quickly with the worsening weather. Just last week, he said, there were 13 shipwrecks off the coast of Greece and over 150 people died or are missing, including dozens of children.

Guterres said the European Union has the capacity to manage the crisis, but implementation of its decision to relocate 160,000 asylum-seekers "has been far too slow," and reception centers, registration and screening for tens of thousands of people are urgently needed.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to UN refugee chief: funding is not enough 'to cover even the bare minimum'
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/2015/1103/UN-refugee-chief-funding-is-not-enough-to-cover-even-the-bare-minimum
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe