LONDON (AlertNet) - Global humanitarian assistance fell by 11 percent between 2008 and 2009, from $16.9 billion to $15.1 billion, an annual report compiled by UK-based research group Development Initiatives said on Wednesday.
The decline in the preliminary data for 2009 was due entirely to a drop in government aid from $12.8 billion to $11 billion, the biggest annual fall of the decade. However, the report said this figure was still substantially higher than in 2006 and 2007, when governments gave humanitarian assistance of $9.3 billion and $9.2 billion respectively.
The study identified "significant" contractions in 2009 contributions from Australia, Japan, Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands and the European Commission. But it noted that final data would not be released until the end of the year, and said the role of the financial crisis - which squeezed government budgets - in the suggested falls remains unclear.
While governments are providing much more humanitarian aid than 10 years ago, the growth rate is not steady, the report said, because there are sudden rises and falls as the international community responds to big disasters like the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami or this year's earthquake in Haiti.
"An increase in one year resulting from a major crisis may be followed by a decline, but humanitarian assistance rarely falls back to its previous level," it said.
The rise in aid in 2008 was slightly different from the usual spikes, it noted, and was mainly explained by increased spending in Afghanistan and Ethiopia, in the wake of the food price crisis and other factors.
In 2009, private contributions - including donations from members of the public - are estimated at $4.1 billion, unchanged from the previous year. This component of humanitarian aid has risen by about half since 2006, the report said.
The authors declined to give firm reasons for the fall in humanitarian funding from governments in 2009, telling AlertNet it was too early to know. One major factor is likely to have been the relatively low number and size of disasters that year.
Last month, the Belgium-based Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), said there were 335 natural disasters in 2009, compared with 350 in 2008 and an annual average of 392 between 2000 and 2008. It also noted the absence of a single so-called 'mega disaster' which typically leads to many more deaths, a bigger affected population and a deeper cost to the economy.
The Global Humanitarian Assistance report noted that humanitarian aid levels "would appear to be relatively isolated from periods of global recession" and were influenced far more strongly by large natural crises.
However, it warned that "the potential impact of the financial crisis should not be overlooked", as it is estimated by international organisations to have pushed 100 million more people into poverty last year.
"The pressure on country finances seems likely to continue ... just at the time when overall need may drastically increase," the report said.
IS SPENDING MEETING NEED?
The annual study also highlighted the gaps in the global data on humanitarian assistance, including contributions from governments outside the rich club of donor nations in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, spending on measures to improve security during and after wars, and domestic responses to crises.
It suggested a better way to measure humanitarian assistance would be from the perspective of what help actually reaches the people affected and how it is delivered. This should also be judged in the context of other interventions.
"Beneficiaries are unlikely to care what we call the funding support they receive, but what we use that money for - whether humanitarian, development, recovery, stabilisation, state-building, peacekeeping - will affect what support they do receive," said GHA programme leader Jan Kellett.
Kellett added that humanitarian groups must strive for a much better understanding of peopleÂ?s needs in crisis situations, as aid agencies aspire to match their funding to those needs, without international agreement on what they are or how best to meet them.
The report noted that both requests and funding within the U.N. appeals process have increased over the past decade, but there has been a 30 percent shortfall in donations to those appeals almost every year, despite the overall amount of humanitarian aid easily exceeding the total requested.
For example, in 2009, $7 billion went to U.N.-led appeals, leaving them with an unmet gap of $2.7 billion, and yet there was $4.1 billion in "other humanitarian aid" floating around the world. The report raises the question of whether this additional money was for needs as severe as those budgeted for in the U.N. appeals.
"There are serious inequalities in our spending across different crises," said the report, noting that the world spent $993 per person in Haiti after this year's quake, compared with $72 in the aftermath of four cyclones in the same country in 2008, and $58 each on those affected by conflict in Democratic Republic of Congo in 2009.
Other key facts highlighted in the report include:
To download the report and find more information on humanitarian financing, visit the Global Humanitarian Assistance website.
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