According to United Nations, COVID-19 pandemic is pushing the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance to unprecedented levels and in one year the ranks of extreme poverty has increased dramatically.
In its Global Humanitarian overview 2021 the United Nations said one in 33 people will need aid to meet basic needs like water, food and sanitation, An increase of forty percent that translates to 235 million people worldwide, with concentrations in Yemen, Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia and Afghanistan.
Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary-General said
“The lives of people already living on a knife’s edge are being hit disproportionately hard by rising food prices, falling incomes, interrupted vaccination programs and school closures.”
Mark Lowcock, The UN humanitarian chief who heads OCHA said
“The picture we’re painting this year is the bleakest and darkest perspective on humanitarian needs we’ve ever set out, and that’s because the pandemic has reaped carnage across the most fragile and vulnerable countries on the planet,”
“For the first time since the 1990s, extreme poverty is going to increase, life expectancy will fall, the annual death toll from HIV, tuberculosis and malaria is set to double. We fear a near doubling in the number of people facing starvation.”
Lowcock said Yemen will be facing the most serious problem; the country was majorly funded by the Middle Eastern countries, due to the major drop in funds, aid programmes have been cut and the clinics are shut down
OCHA also mentioned that other countries in need include Congo, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Haiti , Venezuela, Ukraine and South Sudan.
Lowcock said economic impact will have the greatest effect rather than COVID-19 on humanitarian needs.
