UN: Concern is spreading among relief agencies and the UN at the extent of donor fatigue after a series of disasters in the last 12 months that has left non-governmental organisations and the UN lacking adequate donations from governments and the public.
Relief agencies and the UN have said the level of donation for the Pakistan earthquake and the flooding in Central America have come in at a slower pace than the response to Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami, which agencies believe exhausted much of the available international funding. However, the varying levels of aid in part reflect the scale of the disasters. The tsunami in December killed more than 200,000 people in nine countries, while the Pakistani earthquake has killed more than 45,000 people along the India-Pakistan border and left more than 2.5 million people homeless.
The UN is struggling to tap new sources of funding and has also stepped up pressure on oil-rich countries in the Persian Gulf to provide regular contributions to relief operations. So overstretched are the UN's resources that it has borrowed helicopters and staff from other relief operations to respond to the Pakistani earthquake. The UN issued an appeal for $272 million (€225) for the Pakistan earthquake but has received pledges of only $50 million (€41 million) so far. "Our resources are extremely strained," said Hansjoerg Strohmeyer, a senior official in the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
In September, the French campaign for an international tax on airline tickets to finance development aid failed to win the widespread European backing it needed.
Meanwhile, Oxfam International yesterday called for governments to commit an additional $1 billion (€0.8 billion) to a UN emergency fund on top of their existing humanitarian aid level. "This would be a rapid response emergency fund that would help end the delays that have cost so many lives and make sure all crises get funding, not just the most newsworthy," according to Oxfam International.
Colin Roche, advocacy executive for Oxfam Ireland, said governments responded inadequately to less visible crises over the past 12 months in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi and Niger. In relation to Oxfam International's proposed $1 billion UN emergency fund, Mr Roche said: "The Irish Government has already engaged very positively with this fund. We hope to see Ireland offering strong support for it at the UN General Assembly." - (Additional reporting, Washington Post)