HIGHLIGHTS OF PRESS CONFERENCE BY EMERGENCY RELIEF COORDINATOR ANNOUNCING THE 2012 CONSOLIDATED APPEALS

Valerie Amos, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, spoke to journalists at the Palais des Nations in Geneva on 14 December after briefing Member States on the 2012 Consolidated Appeals. She said that tens of millions of people would need emergency aid to survive in 2012 and many were among the most vulnerable people in the world. The United Nations aimed to meet the needs of 51 million people across 16 countries: Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Haiti, Kenya, Niger, the occupied Palestinian territory, Philippines, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Yemen and Zimbabwe. The total requirements for 2012 were $ 7.7 billion.

The 2012 Consolidated Appeals were only slightly larger than the latest revised total of the appeals for the same countries in 2011 - $ 14 million more to be exact. Overall, there was a downward trend in funding requests per appeal for 2012. Nine of the 16 appeals now published for 2012 had lesser requirements than the appeals for the same countries in 2011. Two others – Niger and Kenya – had increases of less than 10 per cent. Those with significant increases were Somalia, Yemen, Djibouti, the Republic of South Sudan and the Mindanao situation in the Philippines. Somalia required $ 500 million more for 2012 than for 2011. Without Somalia, the projected global humanitarian funding requirements for 2012 would be going down by half a billion dollars.

The crisis in the Horn of Africa – Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia – remained the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. Four million people needed urgent humanitarian aid in Somalia alone, and close to 600,000 refugees had sought protection in Kenya. Humanitarian action had already had a significant impact in many regions of Somalia and three areas of Somalia had moved from being “famine” areas to “emergency”. However the situation remained fragile and aid organizations would only be able to sustain these improvements if the current level of assistance was maintained. The $ 2.4 billion requested in 2011 for those four countries had been 78 per cent funded. Total requirements for the Horn of Africa would be some 20 per cent higher in 2012 than for 2011.

Afghanistan continued to suffer large-scale and severe humanitarian needs. A harsh drought in the centre and north over the past months had cast over a million people into acute food insecurity. The Appeal sought $ 437 million for 5.4 million people in Afghanistan.

In Chad, there were serious concerns about the risk of a widespread food crisis, which threatened an estimated 1.6 million people already suffering from food insecurity and malnutrition. This was compounded by one of the worst outbreaks of cholera Chad had experienced in recent history, plus a resurgence of polio, measles and other diseases. To address these problems the country team was appealing for $ 455 million.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo was continuing its path towards stabilization. A great part of the population nevertheless remained extremely vulnerable, facing risk of attacks by armed groups, violations of international humanitarian law and human rights, impaired livelihoods and access to basic needs, and land disputes among other factors. The country team had identified requirements amounting to some $ 718 million.

In Haiti, the context had changed since the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake. Challenges remained, but significant progress had been made in humanitarian action and the response to the cholera epidemic. A total of $ 230 million was needed for 2012.

In the Sahel region, it was already evident that 2012 would be a difficult year for many vulnerable households. Large scale food assistance would be required throughout the region in 2012 and especially in Niger. The 2012 appeal for Niger targeted 3.8 million people and required $ 229 million.

In the occupied Palestinian territory humanitarian needs had not fundamentally changed and $ 416 million were needed to implement 149 relief projects in 2012.

In South Sudan violence had increased and caused displacements. Rising food insecurity, disease outbreaks and seasonal flooding continued to impact humanitarian conditions on the ground. The appeal for South Sudan sought some $ 736 million to help 3.1 million people.

Humanitarian need in Sudan was driven by conflict, displacement and vulnerability. In 2012, humanitarian action would support up to 4.2 million people to ensure food security, access to basic services, shelter and livelihood opportunities.

Yemen was facing a complex emergency that included widespread conflict-driven displacement and a slow onset crisis in food security, malnutrition and disease outbreak. The 2012 plan aimed to assist nearly four million people across the country.

In conclusion, Ms. Amos said that this was a time of pressure on aid budgets, but she asked Member States to make the extraordinary political effort necessary to raise the resources needed to help people. This was a significant challenge and they needed to work together to rise and meet this challenge.

A journalist noted that in the 2012 Consolidated Appeals for Somalia and Chad, among others, the amount of aid for health was very small, and asked about the effect of this, especially coming with cutbacks in the Global Fund projects on HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis. Ms. Amos said it was important to remember that the funding referred to in these documents was for immediate emergency humanitarian needs. There were longer term development efforts that needed to be funded, but the Consolidated Appeal did not look at those which were handled through separate budgets.

A journalist noted that no Arab Spring countries were listed among the 16 countries named in the Consolidated Appeals, and wondered if anything was being planned for them. Ms. Amos said in some Arab Spring countries like Egypt, there had not been a need for a major humanitarian intervention. In Libya, there were pockets of remaining humanitarian needs but there was no need to raise funds for them as there were unfrozen assets that the Transitional Government would utilize to meet those short-term needs. In Tunisia, again, the needs were for third country nationals leaving Libya and going through Tunisia. That was why the Arab Spring countries were not reflected in the Appeals.

Although the situation in Afghanistan was likely to get worse, the Appeal for that country was smaller than the previous year, a journalist noted. Why was this? In response, Ms. Amos said that this was because they had gone through a process where they had focused on being much clearer about what was needed in terms of immediate humanitarian intervention as opposed to intervention related to the longer-term recovery/development sphere.

In response to another question, Ms. Amos said that Syria at the moment was a critical crisis in terms of the protection of civilians and human rights abuses. There were clearly pockets of humanitarian needs. However, they had not been able to get in and carry out the kind of in-depth assessments needed to evaluate fully the humanitarian situation. On the basis of other information available on the situation in Syria, they were still of the view that they had not reached the point where it was a humanitarian crisis. Obviously, if things deteriorated significantly, it had the potential to be one.