Adressing to the world leaders at the World Humanitarian Summit on Monday, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged to fix the gap in humanitarian funding and share the burden of helping people in need across the globe.
“We need to provide more direct funding to local people and communities and fix the persistent humanitarian funding gap and investing in building stable and inclusive societies.” said Ban in his speech at the summit held in İstanbul.
The UN reported that around 540 million dollars of the roughly 135 billion dollars global aid budget was spent on decreasing disaster risk in 2014.
“I call on humanitarian organizations to work more closer together based on shared priorities to meet [the needs] of millions of people in crisis,” he noted.
The summit came at a time when the Syrian civil war enters its sixth year, Europe is facing the worst refugee crisis since World War II and global social inequality has reached a peak amid a rising population.
“We declare we are one humanity with shared responsibilities. Let us resolve, ourselves, here and now, not only to keep people alive but to [give] people a chance at life in dignity,” Ban said.
The summit was attended by 125 of the UN’s 193 member states. At least 50 heads of government will announce several commitments to reduce humanitarian disasters.
Preventing and ending conflict; respecting the rules of war; addressing forced displacement; achieving gender equality; responding to climate change; ending the need for aid; and investing in humanity are the main issues at the summit.
Urging the international community to cut the amount of internally displaced people by 50 percent by 2030, Ban Ki-moon is also expected to push for an increase in world spending on reducing disaster risk at the summit.
Turkey ranked third in the list of countries with the most international humanitarian work in 2012 and 2013, the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency, TIKA, says in its Turkish Development Assistance 2013 report — the latest such figures from the agency.
Around 10 billion dollars has been spent by Turkey since the outbreak of the Syrian crisis for almost 3 million Syrian refugees across Turkey.