(C) Common Dreams This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Volumes of humanitarian and wider crisis financing [1] [] Date: 2023-06 This chapter examines the scale of funding and need, analysing trends in international humanitarian assistance in the second year of the Covid-19 pandemic and the wider context of total development funding. It explores the sufficiency of funding compared with identified need, how much funding is being targeted towards gender-related responses and the intersection between humanitarian and climate finance. In 2021, total international humanitarian assistance increased by 2.5% (US$0.8 billion) to US$31.3 billion. Between 2018 and 2021, total assistance has plateaued, with marginal growth of just 2.6% over this four-year period, despite needs continuing to rise. This compares with annual growth of more than 10% between 2012 and 2018. As the number of countries experiencing protracted crisis has grown, these countries have received a growing share of official development assistance, from 9.4% in 2012 to around 14% in the five years to 2021. However, as humanitarian need continues to grow, governments are faced with increasingly difficult choices related to their wider aid budgets. These challenges have been exacerbated in 2022 by the conflict in Ukraine, with clear risks including: de-prioritisation of humanitarian spending in other crisis contexts; development funding drawn to in-country refugee expenditure; and reduced overall aid budgets as demand for other expenditure, including military assistance, grows. A total of US$38.4 billion was requested through UN-coordinated appeals in 2021. This was 2.3% (US$895 million) lower than in 2020 but still US$7.9 billion more than in 2019. Funding was requested for 48 UN-coordinated appeals, compared with 55 in 2020 and 36 in 2019. The gap between needs and requirements narrowed slightly but remained large. In 2021, 56% of identified funding requirements were covered, up from 51% in 2020. This represents the second-highest shortfall ever in the volume of funding provided: US$16.9 billion, less than 2020’s US$19.1 billion. The overall pattern of funding to individual clusters has remained largely unchanged over the past four years, despite some year-on-year fluctuation. Food security has consistently received the largest volume of funding: US$6.0 billion in 2021, almost four times the next-largest cluster. Funding specifically targeted to gender grew from US$268 million in 2018 to US$587 million in 2021. In 2021, total reported gender-relevant funding accounted for 3.4% of total international humanitarian assistance. As the number of climate-driven and climate-related disasters continues to rise, climate finance could present one option for alleviating pressure on humanitarian systems. Climate finance is heavily focused on anticipatory action, and a small proportion of climate finance goes to countries already at risk of multiple crises in fragile and conflict-affected states. The 34 countries experiencing protracted crisis in 2020 received a total US$1.6 billion in adaptation funding, less than 3% (2.8%) of their total bilateral official development assistance funding (US$56.8 billion), and 27% (US$6.0 billion) of climate-relevant official development assistance for adaptation. Only 12% (US$1.3 billion) of disbursed funding from multilateral climate funds (US$10.7 billion) goes to fragile and conflict-affected states. No clear financing mechanism yet exists to diminish the climate losses and damages communities face, with these costs borne by local actors or the humanitarian system. [END] --- [1] Url: https://devinit.org/resources/global-humanitarian-assistance-report-2022/volumes-of-humanitarian-and-wider-crisis-financing/ Published and (C) by Common Dreams Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/commondreams/