The United Nations appealed today for a record USD 22.2 billion (20.9 billion euros) to provide aid in 2017 to surging numbers of people hit by conflicts and disasters around the world.
It's "the highest amount we have ever requested," UN humanitarian aid chief Stephen O'Brien told a press conference.
"This is the reflection of a state of human needs in the world not witnessed since the Second World War," he said.
He added that more than 80 per cent of the needs stem from manmade conflicts "many of which are now protracted and push up demand for relief year after year."
The global appeal by UN agencies and other humanitarian organisations aims to gather funds to help the 92.8 million most vulnerable of the nearly 129 million people expected to require assistance across 33 countries next year.
The numbers are staggering, especially when considering that three war-ravaged countries -- Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan -- alone account for about a third of all of those in need.
The amount appealed for tops the USD 20.1 billion requested last December for 2016 -- a year when "humanitarian actors have saved, protected and supported more people than in any previous year since the founding of the United Nations," O'Brien said in the report.
In the end, the UN broadened its 2016 appeal to USD 22.1 billion, but donors coughed up just USD 11.4 billion for aid projects this year.
"With persistently escalating humanitarian needs, the gap between what has to be done to save and protect more people today and what humanitarians are financed to do and can access is growing ever wider," O'Brien said in the report.
Making matters worse, he said that "with climate change, natural disasters are likely to become more frequent, more severe".
Aid needs have been rising steadily for decades. When the UN launched its first global appeal 25 years ago, it estimated that just USD 2.7 billion would cover aid needs around the globe in 1992.
But the situation has worsened dramatically in the last few years.
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