UNITED NATIONS — The combined resources of U.N. agencies, the Red Cross and humanitarian organizations are no longer enough to protect the 60 million people displaced by war and persecution around the world, the U.N. refugee chief said Tuesday.
Governments, private citizens, corporations and foundations have provided the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees with a record $3.3 billion last year, Antonio Guterres told the General Assembly’s human rights committee. Yet, humanitarian budgets aren’t enough “to cover even the bare minimum, and we are starting to see what happens as a result of that,” he said.
Guterres said “the trigger” for the mass arrival of Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans and Eritreans in the eastern Mediterranean this year “is the humanitarian funding shortfall.”
He also cited two longer-term trends: After years in exile, most of the 4 million Syrian refugees in neighboring countries have depleted their savings and lost hope of a political solution to end the nearly five-year conflict.
Currently, Guterres said, 70 percent of Syrian refugees in Lebanon are living in “extreme poverty” and 86 percent in urban areas of Jordan are living below the country’s poverty line.
UNHCR has been struggling to provide cash and shelter materials to the growing number of extremely vulnerable families, he said. And earlier this year, the U.N. World Food Program was forced to cut their assistance by 30 percent, “which made many refugees feel that the international community was starting to abandon them.”
