The current situation highlights the challenges facing humanitarian agencies, which face funding shortages to respond to a multitude of global crises. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) warned on Wednesday that it alone needs $400 million by the end of the year.
At the opening of the Global Refugee Forum in Geneva, UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi called on donors to step up their support. “Many humanitarian organizations are facing serious funding challenges,” he said, noting that “UNHCR alone is $400 million short of ending the year with the minimum resources needed.”
This, he added, is “a deficit that we have not experienced for years, and we all look with great concern to the year 2024.”
Conflicts and crises, whether the war in Ukraine, the civil war in Sudan or a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, have fueled record displacement, even before the outbreak of the war in Gaza.
The number of displaced people worldwide surpassed 114 million by the end of September, a historic figure.
Grandi said that represents “114 million broken dreams, disrupted lives, interrupted hopes. It is a number that reflects a crisis – many crises – of humanity.”
Of these people, nearly 36.5 million have fled abroad and are living as refugees, according to the UNHCR – a figure that has doubled in the past seven years and is expected to continue to rise.
“A major humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding in the Gaza Strip,” Grandi warned, regretting that “so far the Security Council has failed to put an end to the violence.”
Although the war that broke out after Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7 does not fall under UNHCR’s mandate, Grandi said the agency expects it to result in “more deaths and of civilian suffering, as well as additional displacement that threatens the region.
While maintaining a strong focus on Gaza, he called on the international community not to lose sight of other pressing humanitarian and refugee crises.
He spoke of the millions of people displaced by conflicts in Ukraine and Sudan, the situation of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, and the millions who have fled due to conflict and insecurity in Syria, Afghanistan, the Republic Democratic Republic of Congo and throughout the Sahel region.
More than 3,000 people, including heads of state and government and more than 300 refugees, are participating in the second edition of the forum, which will be held until Friday.
Grandi called on participants to make the forum “a moment of unity, where we join forces to ensure that those who flee because their lives, freedom and security are threatened can find protection, and that everything is done to resolve their exile as quickly as possible.