Today nine new humanitarian assistance country profiles go live on the GHA website. Three new donor profiles, Ireland, Norway, and Qatar; and six new recipient profiles, Burundi, Mali, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, and Syria as well as the Philippines added in the light of the current Typhoon Haiyan emergency response.
These profiles are there as a resource for anyone concerned with humanitarian assistance in a given country – donor and recipient countries (government ministries and citizens alike), operational humanitarian agencies, researchers, and advocates around the world and on the ground.
They add to our existing catalogue of 48 humanitarian country profiles which compile and analyse the available humanitarian funding data from 2002 to 2011 (and 2012 where available). The profiles show the trends on what was spent, by whom, where (in the case of donors) and on what. The data behind them is all downloadable.
So what do the nine new profiles tell us?
Although the global trend reveals a decrease in the total humanitarian assistance between 2011 and 2012 (as reported in “Global Humanitarian Assistance report 2013”) our country profiles show that this decline was not the case with all donors. Of our new donor profiles for example, Norway did decrease its contribution between by US$36 million (2011-2012). But Ireland and Qatar increased their contributions by US$5 million and US$25 million respectively, the latter part of an ongoing trend where non-DAC donors are picking up the shortfall left by many OECD-DAC donors.
The country profiles also provide background to 2013’s highest profile humanitarian appeals: Philippines and Syria. Even prior to Typhoon Haiyan, the Philippines saw a significant rise in humanitarian assistance from US$7 million in 2002, to $123 million in 2011 in response to the typhoon and earthquake as well as the conflict in Mindanao. The majority of this 2011 funding came from Japan. Bilateral spending on disaster reduction and preparedness in particularly is relatively high in the Philippines, and has been rising over recent years reaching US$39 million in 2011. Between 2007 and 2011, an estimated 24% of total bilateral humanitarian assistance to the Philippines was spent on disaster prevention and preparedness.
Prior to the 2012 upsurge in violence and displacement and revised UN appeal, Syria was only the 23rd greatest recipient of humanitarian assistance in 2011. In that year, Turkey was the greatest bilateral donor of humanitarian assistance to Syria, donating a total of US$19 million; second only to EU Institutions’ contribution of US$30.6 million. The US, Sweden, UK and Germany each gave over US$10 million.
The data in our country profiles is derived from UN OCHA Financial Tracking Systen (FTS) and OECD DAC data. The latter is only confirmed in 2014 for 2013 expenditure, and full data for 2012 is not available until late December 2013, which is why our country profiles provide a historical, rather than a real-time, picture of funding trends. GHA also tracks the response to some current crises, using data as it is reported to the OCHA FTS. We are currently providing updates on the evolving funding situation in response to Typhoon Haiyan.
If you have any data queries about recent updates and current crises in any of the featured countries, please do contact our helpdesk.