Number of Inter-agency appeals & average length of crises (YEARS)
Funding received by appeal length (US $ million)
Funding requested by appeal length (US $ million)
People targeted by appeal length (million)
Crises by number of cumulative appeals
Data runs until 2016, which is the most recent year for which complete data was available at the time of publication. To find out more details about each crisis, click on the country name.
| Number of Cumulative Appeals | ||
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To find out more about the state of current crises, visit Humanitarian Insights
Impact of protracted crises
Protracted crises, often driven by intractable conflict, have consequences that affect entire communities and put basic services in jeopardy. International humanitarian law prohibits the targeting of civilian objects, emphasizing the importance of schools and hospitals to the civilian population, especially children. However, these facilities continue to be targeted during conflicts.
Protection of health-care
facilities
Protection of health-care workers and facilities in armed conflict is a tenet of international humanitarian law and the focus of Security Council resolution 2286. Yet, health-care workers, facilities and transports were casualties of more than 700 attacks in 2017 – and potentially many more that went unreported. Attacks were concentrated in the Middle East and Africa, with Afghanistan (66), occupied Palestinian territory (93) and Syria (252) recording the most incidents.
Attacks on Education
In 2017, the United Nations verified 188 incidents of military use of schools, both by government forces and rebel groups. In Syria alone, since the onset of the conflict in 2011, the protracted crisis has resulted in severe consequences. By May 2018, more than 2 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 were out of school, while more than 180,000 education personnel, including teachers, have abandoned school sites and classrooms.
Yemen: Young students play in the ruins of the Aal Okab school, destroyed in June 2015.
Opportunities for improving action
In the face of protracted crises, humanitarians are moving towards working closer together with development and other partners, to address root causes of vulnerability.
Nigeria: Construction of 700 shelters for IDPs in Pulka, with support from the Nigeria Humanitarian Fund.
Strengthening local action through
country-based pooled funds
(CBPFs)
CBPFs play a valuable role in supporting the localization of humanitarian assistance and aid delivery by directing funding to national NGOs that may have more familiarity with on-the-ground conditions. In 2017, CBPFs funded 1,288 projects implemented by 657 partners. Allocations to local partners have generally increased. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the share of funding to national NGOs rose from 21 per cent in 2016 to 38 per cent in 2017. However, overall contributions to CBPFs still fall short of the target set under the Grand Bargain, which envisions 15 per cent of humanitarian requirements to be channelled through CBPFs. Reaching this target would allow CBPFs to be even more effective in distributing funds to the best-placed responder.
Using Artificial Intelligence to
Track Displacement
The global picture on internal displacement is currently incomplete. Not all incidents of internal displacement are reported and only some of the figures can be verified. New tools are emerging to bolster collection and verification efforts.One example is the Internal Displacement Event Tagging and Clustering Tool (IDETECT) – this tool mines huge news data sets, and through natural language processing and machine learning algorithms, it classifies reports by type of displacement, while also extracting information about location and the number of people displaced in real time.
Nigeria: internally displaced people at Wege Arrival Camp (Pulka Transit Camp)
The timelines below illustrate the flow of displacement facts captured through IDETECT, validated and cross-checked against events that took place in Nigeria through 2017.
To find out more about the current humanitarian response in Nigeria, visit Humanitarian Insights https://www.hpc.tools/plan/642
Resources
World Humanitarian Data and Trends is just one part of OCHA's efforts to improve data and analysis on humanitarian situations worldwide and build a humanitarian data community.
The Information Gap
Due to the complexity of humanitarian crises, there are many gaps in the available information. Even the concepts of humanitarian needs and assistance are flexible, and there are inherent biases in the information. To truly understand and measure impact, the humanitarian community will need to continue working on better standards and ways of collecting, sharing and using data.
WHDT is structured in accordance with the Agenda for Humanity’s five Core Responsibilities, which set out changes needed to reduce need, risk and vulnerability. To learn more, visit www.agendaforhumanity.org.
