A man unloads rice from a
humanitarian food convoy that arrived from the Malian capital Bamako in
the northeastern city of Gao, Picture June 12, 2012. REUTERS/Adama
Diarra
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Can you name the five biggest humanitarian aid donors last
year? No prizes for guessing the United States gave the most, but up
there at number four is Turkey.
And if you look at donations compared to national wealth,
Turkey was the third most generous country – well ahead of the United
States. Only Luxembourg and Sweden gave more aid in relation to their
gross national income (GNI).
Turkey donated over $1 billion in humanitarian aid last
year, just behind Britain ($1.17 bn), the European Union ($1.88 bn) and
the United States ($3.80 bn).
The surprise rankings are revealed in this year’s Global Humanitarian Assistance (GHA) report released on Wednesday, which shows that overall global humanitarian aid fell 8 percent in 2012 from 2011.
It is likely a large proportion of Turkey’s donations went
to the surrounding region, especially to victims of the Syrian crisis on
its doorstep. Turkey has taken in some 350,000 refugees from Syria's
civil war and has helped other countries hosting refugees.
"Turkey has emerged as a significant deliverer of
humanitarian assistance in recent years,” said Dan Coppard, Director of
Research, Analysis and Evidence at Development Initiatives which
published the report.
“There are a number of potential reasons for this, including
the fact that they are supporting large numbers of refugees and
providing regional assistance in relation to the Syria crisis, and also
that their reporting may have improved.”
Turkey’s humanitarian assistance has traditionally focused
on a small number of recipients, predominantly Pakistan, Somalia and
Iraq. In 2011, Somalia was the largest recipient and Turkish Prime
Minster Recep Tayyip Erdogan became the first non-African leader to
visit the anarchic state in over 20 years.
The report points out that while a number of donors and
non-governmental organisations work in Somalia from regional hubs in
Nairobi, Turkey’s aid agencies are more visible on the ground in
Somalia.
SOMALIA TRAGEDY
Turkey’s new prominence illustrates the increasingly important role of non-traditional donors.
“This is probably part of a wider trend,” Coppard said.
“Traditional, western donors provide the majority of international
humanitarian assistance (over 90 percent since 2007) but the balance is
shifting: non-traditional donors' contributions are increasing and these
countries have the potential to make significant and valuable
contributions, both to humanitarian assistance and overall development
aid.”
But the overall picture of who gives what is still far from
clear, and much better reporting is needed to get a more accurate idea,
he said.
The fact that overall humanitarian aid fell in 2012 is
partly because there were no “mega-disasters” like the Haiti earthquake
or the Japanese tsunami. The report describes 2012 as the “year of
recurring disasters”, highlighting the persistent exposure of the
world’s poorest people to crises.
The publication also pulls together statistics that show the
shocking impact of the hunger crisis in Somalia, which killed an
estimated 257,500 people - half of them children under five - between
October 2010 and March 2012.
One stark graph, which contrasts the number of deaths per
month with aid contributions, demonstrates the dire effects of the
international community’s delayed response to the unfolding crisis
despite advance warnings.
In late 2012 the United Nations announced a three-year
consolidated appeal for Somalia, the first of its kind, and a major
advance in efforts to push for more predictable funding for chronic
crises.
The report’s key recommendations to donors include:
- providing more predictable multi-year funding for chronic crises
- spending more on disaster prevention and preparedness in
close collaboration with the governments of affected countries (still
only 4.7 percent of the total in 2011)
- focusing on early response and the interconnectedness of risk
- promoting access to information
The report in figures:
- Global humanitarian aid fell by 8 percent from $19.4 bn in 2011 to $17.9 bn in 2012
- The United Nations targeted 76 million people for humanitarian assistance in 2012, compared with 93 million people in 2011
- Spain reduced its humanitarian assistance by half, Japan by 38 percent and the United States by 11 percent
- Only 62.7 percent of U.N. humanitarian appeals were met in
2012 - the lowest for a decade. This funding gap has increased year on
year since 2007
- Pakistan, Somalia and the West Bank/Gaza Strip received the
most humanitarian assistance in 2011 (the latest year for which
recipients’ figures exist). Pakistan received $1.4 bn, Somalia $1.1 bn,
and the West Bank/Gaza Strip $849 m