UN pleads for record $51.5 bn in emergency supplies in 2023
United Nations' aid chief Martin Griffiths describes the humanitarian needs as "shockingly high" as the extreme events of 2022 spill over into 2023.
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An Afghan girl on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan (AP)
The UN stated on Thursday that a record $51.5 billion in aid will be needed next year as conflicts, climate emergencies, and the lingering pandemic, push more people into disaster, including some into hunger.
According to the United Nations' annual Global Humanitarian Overview, 339 million people worldwide will require some type of emergency assistance next year, which is 65 million more than the previous year's forecast.
"Next year is going to be the biggest humanitarian program" the world has ever seen, the United Nations' aid chief Martin Griffiths told journalists in Geneva.
If all people in need of emergency assistance lived in one country, it would be the world's third-largest, after China and India, he said.
And, according to the revised prediction, one in every 23 people will require assistance in 2023, up from one in every 95 in 2015.
Griffiths described the humanitarian needs as "shockingly high" as the extreme events of 2022 spill over into 2023.
"Lethal droughts and floods are wreaking havoc in communities from Pakistan to the Horn of Africa," he said, also pointing to the war in Ukraine, which "has turned a part of Europe into a battlefield."
US-made crises
More than 28 million people are deemed to be in need in drought-stricken Afghanistan following 20 years of US occupation, which destroyed Afghanistan and put its people on the brink of survival.
More than $5 billion has been sought to solve that combined disaster, with further billions needed to assist the many millions of people affected by the US fuelled hostilities in Syria and Yemen.
The appeal also emphasized Ethiopia's dire situation, where a worsening drought and a two-year conflict in Tigray have left nearly 29 million people in desperate need of aid.
Faced with such towering needs, Griffiths claimed he hoped 2023 would be a year of "solidarity, just as 2022 has been a year of suffering."
