GHA-Report-2010.pdf - Global Humanitarian Assistance

FIGURE2: HUMANITARIAN FUNDING RECEIVED PER PERSON BASED ON TOTAL POPULATION
IN STATES RANKED BY THE ECHO GNA AT THE SAME LEVELS OF MOST VULNERABLE AND
CRISIS-AFFECTED, 2009
US$ PER PERSON
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
21
Afghanistan
6
Burundi
17
Central African Republic
41
Chad
10
DRC
1
Cote d’Ivore
12 8
Djibouti
Ethiopia
14
Kenya
1
Mozambique
8
Russian Fed. (Chechnya)
65
Somalia
40
Sudan
7 2
Uganda
Yemen
58
Zimbabwe
GLOBAL NEEDS ASSESSMENT
(GNA) INDEX
Moving beyond a simple headcount
of disaster affected people, the
EU has developed a comparable
index of 139 crisis and vulnerableaffected
states that aggregates
data from a wide range of
sources with indicators spanning
development, poverty, natural and
man-made disasters, population
displacement, under-nourishment,
mortality rates and levels of donor
funding. This GNA index identifies
the most vulnerable countries,
which are most likely to be worst
affected by disasters and then
assesses the extent to which these
countries are affected by crises
and humanitarian needs remain
unmet. These combined indices,
plus a further ‘Forgotten Crises
Assessment’ inform ECHO’s
funding prioritisation.
Source: ECHO GNA 2009/10 and UN OCHA FTS
2.3 million people were affected (less
than Haitian earthquake) and yet more
than US$6 billion of humanitarian aid
was spent. The assistance is equivalent
to a remarkable US$2,670 per person
affected – nearly three times more
than the amount per person affected
following the Haiti earthquake and more
than 37 times more than following the
Haiti cyclones. We are left with two key
questions. Firstly, what justifies the
difference between the Indian Ocean
earthquake-tsunami response and
the Haiti response? Secondly, are the
amounts being spent appropriate? Is the
US$993 of humanitarian aid per person
after the Haiti earthquake not enough,
about right or far too much?
The ECHO Global Needs Assessment
(GNA) index allows us to switch focus
away from natural disasters to countries
that are ranked at the same level of both
vulnerability and crisis, almost all of
which suffer from, or have suffered
from, recent conflict. (See Figure 2.)
A comparison of the amounts of
humanitarian funding received per person
demonstrates considerable variation
in funding levels across crises the GNA
considers to be similarly affected. People
in Somalia and Zimbabwe received
similar amounts per person (US$62 and
US$58 per person) and given the needs
in the countries at the time this may
seem appropriate. Yet the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC) with its multiple
humanitarian needs received only US$10
per person, which is even less than the
US$14 for Kenya.
Variations in the amount of funding
received in a given crisis, whether
in response to an earthquake in
Haiti or for a complex emergency
such as Sudan, do not necessarily
mean a lack of fairness. There are
a number of critical variables that
influence the real cost of delivering
humanitarian assistance including
the ability of humanitarian actors to
access populations and the relative
operating costs involved in delivering
assistance. For example, delivering
aid to Somalia will be very much more
expensive than to neighbouring Kenya,
with its developed markets, transport
infrastructure and relative security. But
again the question remains: is it right
that people living within a humanitarian
crisis in Somalia received four times
as much humanitarian assistance as
the people living in similar crisis in the
Central African Republic (CAR)?
The caveats to this data are important.
For example, CRED data is reliant on
voluntary reporting from a variety of
sources; it defines the term ‘affected’
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