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Ms. JOYCE MSUYA, Assistant Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, remarks during the launch of Global Humanitarian Overview 2024 11 Dec. 2023 (Source)
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11:48
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assistant Secretary General for Humanitarian
affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator
Ms Joyce Msuya
to take the floor.
Thank you. Uh, Melissa
Excellencies
colleagues, ladies and gentlemen,
the world is in the midst of one of the largest humanitarian crises of the modern era
with the devastation wrought by conflict, climate change
and economic hardship fueling unprecedented levels of suffering.
Nearly one out of every five Children
is either living in conflict or fleeing from it.
The number of people suffering acute
food shortages caused mainly by climate
related disasters,
has doubled in the space of a year.
The displacement crisis
is now worse than any we have seen in this century,
and today's conflicts are more intense than ever.
In just two months,
17,000 civilians have reportedly been killed in Gaza,
the majority of them women and Children.
In the face of all of this,
humanitarians around the world have continued
to display astonishing levels of sacrifice,
resolve and courage
as they strive to reach people in their darkest hour.
This year, thanks to the generous contributions of donors,
the humanitarian community helped 128 million
people with some form of assistance.
This is a sign that efforts to strengthen humanitarian action are working.
We are now
more efficient,
effective and accountable.
We have devolved, more power to front line responders
and we are getting better at anticipating threats
so that people can prepare for disasters before
it strikes.
Yet despite these
Herculean efforts,
millions were not reached.
Donor funding this year
fell far short of needs.
Indeed, two
and 23 will be the first year since the global recession
that finance for humanitarian emergencies is lower than the previous year.
As a result,
humanitarian agencies have had to make increasingly painful decisions
cutting life saving food,
water and health programming with devastating results for so many
in Afghanistan,
a country in the grips of famine,
we've had to cut food deliveries to 10 million people
in places like Myanmar and Haiti.
We have had to stop the construction of emergency shelters,
which left almost a million people without a place to live,
exposed to extreme weather and natural disasters
in Nigeria,
we could only reach 2% of women in urgent need of
sexual and reproductive health services and gender based violence prevention.
We cannot
we cannot allow this trend to continue
into next year.
That's why today, on behalf of more than 1900 humanitarian partners,
the majority of them local and national
NGOs were urging donors to fully fund our appeal for $46.4
billion.
This money will provide a lifeline to 181 million people
in 72 countries
men, women and Children whose lives have been shattered by war, climate change,
economic hardship and other disasters.
Although the amount we're asking for is less than last year,
this does not mean the global humanitarian situation has improved.
It means we have had to focus our efforts
on the people who face the greatest threat to their lives.
Faced with cuts, we have had to get creative,
working tirelessly to prepare robust evidence based
appeals anchored in in depth analysis.
Thanks to this work, we know exactly what needs to be done
First,
more support than ever
will need to be channelled through local and national partners to
ensure that humanitarian action is truly grounded in people's priorities.
In Mozambique,
I met women going door to door
to speak with survivors of the world's most powerful cyclone.
These women
understood the needs on the ground and were able to
respond with speed and flexibility to ever shifting priorities.
We must do even more to empower groups like this.
Second,
we need to step up efforts to prepare communities for disaster.
Anticipatory action not only protects lives,
it reduces the financial cost of humanitarian action,
allowing us to do more with less.
At Cop 28 in Dubai,
we announced the creation of the Surf Climate Action Account
that will channel rapid, flexible funding to climate related emergencies.
We will also use
the pooled funds to increase the amount
of pre arranged finance that can be mobilised
the moment disaster strikes.
Third,
we must prioritise humanitarian diplomacy if we
want to get life saving aid into countries
where armed groups and bureaucratic barriers have
cut off tens of millions of people.
Afghanistan and Syria are examples of what patient,
consistent trust building and negotiation can achieve.
These efforts must be doubled,
ladies and gentlemen,
having just returned from Cop 28 and before that
from some of the country's worst hit by climate shocks
in eastern southern Africa,
I want to end with a word
about the climate crisis
as humanitarians working on the front lines of the world's disaster zones.
We know the future that scientist wonders about has arrived.
Our planet is now hotter than it has been for at least 12,000 years.
Human activity has pushed the planet into a new age,
an age of fire, heat, flood and drought
unlike any humanity has faced.
This year we saw record breaking heat,
supercharge natural disasters and extreme weather planet wide.
In
Libya,
flash floods killed at least 4000 people, with thousands still missing
and displaced more than 40,000 people.
In Canada,
wildfires burned an area of forest roughly the size of Syria.
So far this year,
climate and weather related disasters affected more than 44 million people,
causing more than 18,000 deaths.
The climate crisis is also turbo,
charging
the world's existing humanitarian crisis
plunging, people
already reeling from disaster
into even greater depths of misery.
The humanitarian community is doing everything it can to respond.
We are providing immediate on the ground support
to the world's most marginalised and affected.
We are finding ways to support longer term resilience
even as we provide life saving assistance
and we are delivering fast, effective assistance
through our pool funds to local organisations
operating in the most fragile places.
But the pace and scale of change is rapidly outstripping our ability to respond,
stretching an overburdened system to breaking point.
Our message is clear.
There is no humanitarian solution
to the climate crisis.
Unless we address the root causes of this crisis
by taking aggressive steps to mitigate
climate change and build resilience,
the humanitarian system will be overwhelmed.
We have. We have been warned about what awaits us. Should we fail to act
within a little more than 20 years,
more than 1.6 billion people
could be exposed to severe and extreme drought.
That's four times today's number
and the number of people living in very high crisis risk countries
will roughly triple.
Given this nightmare scenario,
it is imperative that donors support resilience and climate adaptation
alongside humanitarian relief.
The money for the transition is clearly there.
Last year, G 20 governments spent a record $1.4
trillion
on fossil fuel subsidies.
This is 30 times more than what we need to fund this year's humanitarian appeal.
That fact alone
should give us a pause.
This year's global humanitarian overview points, a picture
of a world
plagued by multiple escalating and interconnected crises,
among them a spiralling climate emergency that is adding more fuel to the fire.
Yet
it also paints a picture of a humanitarian community
that has grown more skilled, more efficient
and faster at reaching people in their time of greatest need.
And so I would like
I would I would ask you for a moment
to imagine what might be possible
if this community
received the funds it needed.
Imagine how many more millions of people we could reach,
how many more we could help to rebuild and repair lives
upended by world's disaster.
This is the world I want to see us built together,
and I know you do, too.