Humanitarian Crisis

Donors committed US$610.1 million to humanitarian operations in Ethiopia at a high-level pledging event on Tuesday, but fell short of the target. One billion US dollars is needed to fund the immediate response and ensure a pipeline of aid for the next five months. But before the conference, the situation was much worse, as the country's UN-backed $3.24 billion Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) for 2024 was less than 5 percent funded.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) warns that urgent action is needed to save lives in Nigeria, where the malnutrition crisis is escalating. Without immediate intervention, 1.8 million children could die from severe acute malnutrition (SAM). The Nigeria Red Cross Society (NRCS) reports that 84 percent of healthcare facilities in six northern states have insufficient supplies of lifesaving ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF).

Haitian leaders are rushing to meet a looming deadline to name members of a transitional council that will take power following the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry. Meanwhile, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that Haiti is on the brink of a devastating hunger crisis, with humanitarian operations at risk of grinding to a halt amid rampant violence as armed gangs tighten their grip on the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Myanmar’s military has created a perpetual human rights crisis through the continuous use of violence, including the killing, arbitrary arrest, torture and enforced disappearance of anti-coup opponents, a report by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) says. The report published Friday documents a litany of human rights abuses from 1 February 2022 to 31 January 2023, accompanied by a sharp rise in violence especially in the north-western and south-eastern parts of Myanmar.

As conflict continues to rage across parts of Sudan, including North Darfur State and the Kordofan region, pockets of relative safety have emerged over the past four months — spurring more than one million internally displaced Sudanese to return home, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Since last year, a further 320,000 refugees have returned to Sudan, mainly from Egypt and South Sudan, some to assess the current situation before deciding to return.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warns that the ongoing conflict and spreading disease outbreaks are having a devastating impact on children in Sudan. Separately, independent human rights investigators report that the civil war in Sudan is intensifying, marked by an increased use of heavy weaponry in populated areas and a sharp rise in sexual and gender-based violence. Countless civilians caught in the conflict face devastating consequences.

According to the United Nations, large numbers of children are dying every month from malnutrition, measles and diarrhea, and other preventable diseases in Sudan, where armed conflict has displaced more than 5.3 million people from their homes. Between May 15 and September 14, at least 1,200 children under the age of five died from a deadly combination of a suspected measles outbreak and high malnutrition in nine camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) in Sudan's White Nile state alone.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) says three million children in the Central African Republic (CAR) face the highest recorded level of overlapping and interrelated crises and deprivation in the world.  The UN agency warned on Tuesday that ten years of protracted conflict and instability in the Central African country had rendered children invisible and at risk of being completely forgotten by international donors, the global media and the public.

As global humanitarian funding plummets due to extreme funding cuts by the United States, the United Nations on Thursday released US$110 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to scale up life-saving assistance in ten of the world's most underfunded and neglected crises in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In total, more than 307 million people around the world are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said on Friday that some 400,000 Syrians have returned from neighboring countries since the fall of the Bashar al-Assad government on December 8 last year. Over the same period, more than one million internally displaced persons (IDPs) inside Syria have also returned, bringing the total number of Syrians who have gone home to over 1.4 million.

As brutal gang violence continues to spill over from the capital Port-au-Prince into the Artibonite and other departments of Haiti, the United Nations Secretary-General on Friday joined the Haitian Prime Minister in strongly condemning a horrific gang attack in the town of Pont Sondé, outside the Haitian capital, that left at least 70 people dead, including at least 10 women and three infants. Guterres also called for urgent support for the Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission.

The situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was the most neglected displacement crisis in the world in 2021, according to a report by the non-governmental organization Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). The analysis, released June 1, lists the top ten least noticed displacement crises in the world in 2021.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has warned today that aid fatigue is growing at a time when a record number of people are fleeing conflict, persecution, human rights violations, climate change, and grinding poverty. According to the latest figures, 110 million people around the world are currently displaced within their home country or have sought refuge in other countries. 

The United Nations mission in the Central African Republic (CAR) has announced that it is working with local authorities in the Haut-Mbomou Prefecture, in the south-east of the country, to find a rapid solution to persisting insecurity.  The UN mission said Wednesday that clashes between armed groups and attacks against the Central African armed forces (FACA) have aggravated the humanitarian situation and led to massive displacements in the region. 

The United Nations and humanitarian partner organizations have today launched the 2024 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HNRP) for South Sudan, targeting 6 million children, women, and men with the most acute needs.  In the forthcoming year, 9 million people in the country - a slight decrease from 2023 - are projected to be in need of some form of humanitarian assistance. Among those requiring humanitarian aid will be 4.9 million children.

The 2024 Humanitarian Response Plan for Mali was launched this week in Bamako, the capital of the country. The United Nations, along with humanitarian partner organizations, will need over US$700 million to assist more than 4.1 million people across the Sahel country in 2024, UN officials announced on Thursday. An estimated 7.1 million people in Mali require humanitarian assistance this year, among them are some 3.8 million children.