Preserving our humanitarian gains

Recently six of the biggest humanitarian organizations issued a joint plea for international action, in a report that warned of “a dramatic increase in protracted conflict and displacement, combined with an ever-increasing number of natural disasters [which have] resulted in widespread human suffering, loss of dignity, dashed hopes and death”.

The organizations, which included CARE, International rescue, Oxfam, Save the Children and the World Food Program, presented a doomsday scenario. “Preserving and enhancing the gains civilization has made over the past few centuries is at serious risk,” the report said.

“Unfortunately the needs are running at an unprecedented level of increase across the entire global community,” World Food Program (WFP) chief Etharin Cousin said.

Most of the programs of the WFP used to be disaster-related. But now 80 per cent of its large emergency responses are conflict related, Cousin said. And the trouble is, aid doesn’t end war. “If conflict is what is driving you and… you don’t have political solutions to the conflict, it requires us to continue to provide support.”

The “ongoing plea” is “that the world not turn away from those in need… We live on a small planet and we are all responsible”.

[The Age]

This entry was posted in Humanitarian Aid, International Cooperation, Philanthropy by Grant Montgomery.