Some manmade or natural disasters grab headlines and the attention of donor countries. Some disasters are very, very far off the radar. Accordingly, the money that is needed to provide for basic humanitarian needs of people affected by crisis is totally inadequate compared to the needs. These are considered underfunded and neglected crises.
The UN just released this map showing the 10 most underfunded humanitarian crises in the world today. Chad, Colombia, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Djibouti, Haiti, Mali, Myanmar, Sudan, Uganda and Yemen top the list.
The map comes from the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), which is a pool of donor money reserved, in part, for neglected crisis. Twice a year CERF releases money for the most underfunded crises. It is the UN’s attempt to correct an inherent imbalance in disaster response: that when a crisis has political resonance in a wealthy countries, the disaster response money flows, but when the crisis happens in a political backwater it is much, much harder to raise humanitarian funds. The human needs, of course, are the same.