=== Transcript ===

Kun Li: "By October 30th, our money will run out, okay? We will not have enough to sustain the $10 for all 1 million people. So that's what we call a pipeline break. So yeah, so what doesn't mean we'll have zero money, just the money is really not enough to apply the food $10 for 1 million people. We cannot say, okay, only this proportion people get that, and the rest you wait. We cannot do that. So either we gave 100% or we go down to zero."

That is what happens, when funding for humanitarian ais runs out. The one million people Kun Li from the World Food Program is referring to here, are the Rohingya refugees that are living in a large camp in the cox bazaar district of Bangladesh. As the Norwegian refugee council stated in a press release on the 2nd July, only 18% of the almost 50 billion dollars funding required to support the over 300 million people in need of aid for 2024 had so far been allocated (Source: https://www.nrc.no/news/2024/july/alarmi...). The funding gap between what the UN projects as needed for humanitarian aid and what donors are prepared to provide has been growing in the last year. There are many reasons why that is the case, but to understand why donors giving more is really needed, it is necessary to understand how humanitarian aid by the UN works, where corners can be cut and what would really help, because reducing expenditure isn't an option where humanitarian aid is concerned, as Kun Li, who works for the regional office of the World Food Program in Bangladesh can explain in regard to the local situation.

Kun Li: "Well, the funding requirement, we start by looking at the needs. So what's really needed? For example, the Rohingya refugees, the need is very obvious. So one million people, they need food on a daily basis. So that's how we calculate how much funding is needed for that. And same for outside the camps, for the development programs, again, based on need. Bangladesh as a whole is also very disaster prone. So we also anticipate what could be the caseload or need if a cyclone hit, or a flood hit. So based on that information, we design our country program and know how much money is needed. According to international humanitarian principles, every day a normal person need 2100, 2100 kilocalories, that much energy to maintain the well-being, ensure productivity. So how we fulfill that requires, of course, food. Then using that we calculate, okay, this is actually $12 per person per month And then we look at, okay, within this refugee setting, how much of that need can be fulfilled by themselves? As you know, people are not passive beings. They have their means to somehow make a living, to make ends meet. So if we put that percentage aside, then what's really that critical mass left for a humanitarian agency like WfP to come in and to pick that portion up? So that $12 is how is that calculated."

As of July 2024, thanks to more funding coming in, they can now provide food rations of 12.50$. The basis for how much money humanitarian aid by the UN requires is directly related to providing enough that those in need can survive. The situation on the ground determines how much money the UN requests from donor countries, for it is mainly states that provide the funding for the UNs humanitarian aid programs. And humanitarian aid means a large scope of different projects. For example, the WFP in Bangladesh not only provides food for Rohingya refugees, but also provides aid to people affected by increasingly severe floods that have gotten worse and worse as climate change impacts the country. Food security programs and income generating activities target those who have lost everything they had to the floods, including creative local programs like planting pumpkins on temporary sandbars that no one owns or providing the basics for small enterprises like manufacturing compost from dung or growing mushrooms. Here, humanitarian aid means enabling people to provide for themselves again after having lost their homes, their livestock and the small patch of land they had to grow food. Everything needed to provide this life-saving support flows into the funding requirements that the UN sets, as Bithika Biswas, Head of the Rangpur Field Office of the World Food Program explains.

Bithika Biswas: "We do not have any choice here. We are field people, we do just the implementation things from here. But the project design is made by our country office colleagues, program colleagues. Program designing is their responsibility. What best we can do we can pick some ideas from the field that it could be done, it could be done, something like that. And especially for the emergency response things then we suggest them that this area is affected, this area is affected. So we need this type of support for this area, for this many people, for that duration. This area is, the people are suffering with this for food insecurity, for malnutrition things. And we just convey our message that we need to do this type of things for those areas, those areas, those areas. And as the country office people they deal with the donors, fund mobilization thing. They sometimes try to put things or collect things according to the requirements of the donors."

And the fact is, that the funding isn't enough. This leads to the scary situation, where some people don't get the humanitarian aid that they need.

Bithika Biswas: "But what happens sometimes is that we can go for 10 people, but there might be more with similar categories. You know, we don't have enough scope to support all of them."

But not all of the money goes towards directly helping those in need. As Kun Li, the Head of Partnerships, Communication and Reporting points out, there are also some overhead costs involved.

Kun Li: "You know, operational cost, we call it. Human resource, of course, people need to be paid for that. So that's about, you know, a 6.5% that's, you know, throughout. That's our standard, you know, operational rate. So put all that together. So donor needs to also give us not just the money to pay for the food, but also cover the operational cost. So we call that the full cost recovery, yeah."

With only 6.5% operational costs, most of the money donors give for humanitarian aid flows directly towards helping people in need. So the funding requirements are based on direct, material need and the operational costs required to provide that. Still, more often than not, the UN does not receive enough funding for humanitarian aid. Martin Rentsch, the World Food Program Head of Communications for Berlin, explains what happens then.

Martin Rentsch: "We scale it back. We cut rations. I mean you saw that in Cox's Bazaar. I mean if we don't get the money we need to reach those one million, nearly one million people. we spread thin or as thin as possible to reach people, as many people as possible. But if that is not sufficient enough, if it becomes so little food that it is irrelevant, we also have to reduce the number of persons and that means we have to feed those who are most vulnerable first and then the others. But that sometimes means that we have to take, you know, to take from the hungry to feed people who are already starving. I mean that is the reality, for example in Syria where we had to cut millions of people from our programs, same in Afghanistan. And also here in Cox's Bazaar, I mean you saw the food voucher was down to 8 Euros at one point."

Obviously, reducing aid to starving people can lead to problems - from simple protests to worse. But those affected rarely direct anger towards the UN agencies. Kun Li explains that they not only also try to tell those affected what is happening, but that people in a humanitarian crisis also show a degree of solidarity in this regard.

Kun Li: "There are rumors of course, discommunication, miscommunication, now they want to push us back to Myanmar. But what we have seen is that we haven't really have, you know, that much big protest or you know, targeted against directly to WFP. We also heard from like community gatherings, people just say this is what the Allah want us to go through. And also their sentiments like when we had the first Ration cut, that was the Turkish and Syrian earthquake happened. They also say, you know, we want we want also help our brothers over there. So that, you know, let's just deal with the less, less aid, maybe the money is needed to support them. So there is that kind of solidarity among themselves."

But just less aid for a smaller group of more severely affected people isn't the only thing that can happen. In the north of Bangladesh, there is a program, where people get support as soon as a severe flood is forecast to happen, so they can afford to save their things from the coming flood and buy food for the duration of the flood. As Bithika Biswas, this program will run out this September unless more funding can be found.

Bithika Biswas: "if our project is not continued then it will be gone it will be September up to this September but if the flood trigger activates then."

Then there will be no humanitarian aid to save the livelihoods of the poorest of the poor, and after the flood they will have nothing left to survive on. No wonder Kun Li from the World Food Program, when asked about the founding requirements concludes that:

Kun Li: "We always need more. The need is there."

This fact makes the funding gap even worse. For if you know that even more funding would be required than the UN requests from it's donors, then having that only funded to around one fifth is disastrous. But some might argue, the local governments should do more, that they are relying to strongly on the UN aid agencies. Both Kun Li and Bithika Biswas see the problem differently for Bangladesh.

Bithika Biswas: "they are also doing a lot of things, disaster response, disaster preparedness, safety net, social safety net program. The government has lots of social safety net programs. We are supporting the disabled persons, the elderly persons, then for the school children, then pregnant mothers, lactating mothers. In different ways, the government is also trying. For the government, it's, you know, it's huge people to cover. We are just piloting here with a few only. there might be millions of this type of vulnerable people. But this is not possible for the government alone to give this type of intensive care for all."

Kun Li: "And Bangladesh is still one of the least developed countries. So the poverty is real, despite its economic growth."

So the need is real and much larger than the official funding request that the UN lobbies donors for. To ensure maximum efficiency, the UN also ensures that different aid providers don't take the little funding there is away from each other by coordinating which life saving funding needs are prioritized, with food often trumping other needs. The critique leveled toward the UN in European debates in this regard, is that it's to large an organization to manage the humanitarian aid response in cost-efficient and flexible way and acts as a eurocentric behemoth in foreign countries. This argument disregards that the UN agencies have in recent years shifted to working with a whole range of local NGOs instead of doing it all themselves, as the Head of Communications of the World Food Program explains, before addressing the critique of the UN being a eurocentric organization.

Martin Rentsch: "One must not forget the international organizations, WFP, the UN, they are not western organizations. WFP is carried over 80 percent by local employees, by employees who are in the countries and from these countries where we work. In this respect, we have this topic on the agenda. But one must not forget that there are at the same time, in view of these conflicts that we also see on the world, at the same time the necessity or the demand of providers, that in difficult partners, in countries where there are regimes, where there are problems, that this money flows independently. And this can be ensured, above all, in the UN, but over local NGOs, over a large network of local NGOs, these funds are of course much more difficult to manage. That means, if you want to continue to provide help in the huge parts of this world, where there are difficult partners, independently, then the United Nations is of course the best way, because you can best control this money."

So just the need for a respected non-interventionist independent non-state provider of humanitarian aid in countries that want to ensure as little foreign influence on their policies as possible makes the UN the best choice for humanitarian aid - otherwise saving lives could become dependent on countries accepting foreign interests in exchange for aid when a humanitarian crisis occurs. Switching to smaller entities won't solve the funding gap. In contrast to state donors, more independent donations have been proposed as a solution, either from corporations or people with enough money to spare - a kind of philanthropic approach. Private donations have been extensively studied, and it is clear that they can't compensate for the collective resources of states and, most crucially, the philanthropic approach won't address the root causes for humanitarian crisis in and of itself (Source: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2018/1...). But they could in theory provide a temporary band-aid where funding is most lacking. This is mainly due to money donated by private individuals and corporations having less strings attached, as the Partnership Officer Shahriar Mojib from the World Food Program in Bangladesh highlights.

Shahriar Mojib: "Once a donor is giving the money to us, they are earmarking it. So maybe like Australia gave money last year for three years, multi-year contribution. And they clearly identified which are the areas we can spend this money. So earmarked money, we cannot just move from one pot to another, totally impossible. But the individual giving, we have like flexibility, we can use it the way we want. It doesn't have a mandated focus area that we need to spend it to the refugee response. So maybe if it is like 20, 30, 50 thousand dollar even, we can have that flexibility. So that's why we encourage these individual giving and private funding that gives us flexibility."

But this band-aid comes with one very large catch: To be able to accept money from private donors, there needs to be due diligence to make sure the money is clean. This requires a large amount of documents to be filed, which is too much of a hassle for most private donors and only feasible for dedicated organizations like the philantrophist agency WFP USA or the Japanese Association for the World Food Program. In any case, currently it does not seam like this form of donations will ever compensate the funding gap in the slightest. Shahriar Mojib states how large these donations are.

Shahriar Mojib: "It's very small, it's very small."

So it seams the only solution is for a whole host of countries to close the funding gap. As the press spokesperson for the german market of the World Food Program, Martin Rentsch, tells me, this is currently very unlikely due to several factors. He and his colleagues are tasked with finding new sources of funding and report on the outcome of the financed programs, so that the taxpayers know what happened with the money. In essence, they draft up the plan of how much money they need and try to sell that pitch to respective donors, obviously with the priorities of the respective country, like Germany which is the third largest donor after the USA and the European commission, in mind.

Martin Rentsch: "The normal case is that we never get these money. So, for example, in 2022 we had a financial need of around 25, 24, 25 billion. That's what we would have liked to have, to do everything we think that would be necessary worldwide in the fight against hunger. For this year, to reach 160 million people, we got about half. And that was a good year. And that means, of course, that we have to withdraw our programs, we have to shorten our rations. That is unfortunately the reality of our work."

One of the problems specifically in Germany, are household cuts that the government had decided to implement and which are also planned for 2025. This specific example illustrates why the funding gap is growing.

Martin Rentsch: "So of course the many different crises competing with each other, with the respective political priorities, of course a big topic. The global economy is in decline or at least weakening. Also in large industrial countries, after Corona, a lot of money that has been spent on health and economic crisis Corona, to catch that, the money is currently missing. Then, of course, the war in many large donor countries, in Ukraine, has demanded a lot of money, a lot of money has gone there, that means the national budgets are often exhausted and also at the limit. At the same time, we have a big increase in humanitarian emergency worldwide. Of course, you can not only provide humanitarian aid, but you have to somehow end this crisis spiral at some point. Of course, this is only possible through development cooperation, through long-term projects, to deal with the hunger at the root. And for all these reasons, of course, the budgets are limited. That means, at the moment of the greatest crisis, you actually had to spend more, but at the same time the money was missing for it. And that is the reality not only in Germany, but in many other western donor countries."

And if a country does decide to fund a crisis response, they allocate the money for specific cases depending on what their governments decide is most necessary, as Shahriar Mojib explains.

Shahriar Mojib: "So the donor countries they have their priorities as well. If I just cite the example of the refugee response, like 2 or 3 years back all of them were really concerned about them. And then they found WP and they said, okay WP, you spend this money for growing refugees, for their food only, nothing else. Don't do anything for Bangladeshi community. Or like the Korea came and Korea said, okay I am giving you 1 million, spend it for cooling down this climate affected people."

This has lead to a growing disparity between different humanitarian aid responses. The currently worst humanitarian crisis in Sudan is severely underfunded, receiving only 17% of funds. In response to this situation, the attempts to fund the humanitarian response isn't only coordinated by the Headquarters of the World Food Program in Rome. Kun Li from the World Food Program in Bangladesh, who works in the capital city of Dhaka, describes a decentralized approach to gaining country donors.

Kun Li: "The majority of the funding proposals and negotiations happens right here in Dahka level. We have all the embassies here, for example, the U.S. is our biggest embassy. Their decision making for us is very much decentralized. If the people here knows the need, they will help us to advocate at their Washington level."

The German Government provided 7.4 million Euros for the humanitarian aimed at the Rohingya refugees in the last two years, in part through the Foreign Federal Ministry, and in part through the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. The german funding though, is a case where, according to Martin Rentsch who is the World Food Program spokesperson in Berlin, the decentralized approach doesn't work.

Martin Rentsch: "The humanitarian division in the GFOR and the foreign ministry, they don't necessarily talk to their embassies. It's a huge tanker, like an octopus with arms all around the world, but it's just the mothership that calls the shots. It comes down to actually one person in the foreign office making the proposals and the minister signs off on them."

The funding gap for humanitarian aid thus is a complicated issue. The way the voluntary donations by the UN member countries come to be is different in every case, with country priorities and different decision hierarchies making it often hard to follow for an outside observer. But it mainly comes down to many countries reducing humanitarian aid donations as multiple crises require state funds, and unless the respective government is prepared to spend more per fiscal year, this means cutting funds elsewhere, like for humanitarian aid. Private donors won't and can't adequately step up and fill the gap and at the same time the need for humanitarian responses is also growing due to the same crises that are impacting donations negatively.

As such, the humanitarian system as it is, can't be sustained under these circumstances, a situation that everyone involved in humanitarian work has already realized, but which has repercussions far beyond their workplace. And while private and corporate donors are sought out, and the UN is working on becoming faster and more effective with less money, these steps won't be enough.

Martin Rentsch: "For us, however, it is clear that no one can retreat from this, because global crises also destabilize regions. Hunger, for example, is a political topic. Hunger can destabilize. Because of hunger, people go on the street and destabilize fragile regions. And I think that states also have to recognize and act accordingly. That is why this is not a topic that can be prioritized per se, because it is supposed to be a soft topic and only happens out of goodwill. No, it is also a tough security issue."

And it isn't just a hard security issue where missing humanitarian aid further destabilizes regions already in turmoil. The soft power that comes with the diplomatic clout of providing for humanitarian response is in and of itself not to be ignored. As Martin Rentsch points out in the case of Germany, a leadership role in providing humanitarian aid also means, that cutting donations to the humanitarian response will have repercussions internationally and for german foreign policy in general.

Martin Rentsch: "If many smaller providers see that Germany is going back, then they will ask themselves, why shouldn't we do that too? And then, so to speak, this system falls into place, like a card house in itself, if the large providers no longer take on a leadership role. I think that is the most important concern we have, because through humanitarian aid, development cooperation, you also practice a kind of influence in difficult regions and have space at the table to talk to difficult prevention partners."

It doesn't help then, that the work the UN agencies do is sometimes obscured by the local governments for their own objectives. According to Shahriar Mojib, the World Food Program in Bangladesh has experienced this first hand.

Shahriar Mojib: "like we have been launching our Fortified Rice one of the events in Dhaka attended by the full minister and high officials from the government. So once it goes to the local media the spotlight is towards the government mostly and supported by like development partners not specifically WFP or others. This is how actually it works. We have seen in the past we haven't seen very tailored maybe news coverage on WFP for the Rohingya food assistance."

Obviously, it makes it even harder to gain funding, if humanitarian aid doesn't gain media exposure. The tendency of reporters that come to Bangladesh to report on humanitarian aid to only report on the Rohingya issue also doesn't help in giving exposure to other humanitarian crises in the country, like the one caused by human made climate change that will only get worse in the next years (Source: https://www.climaterealityproject.org/bl...). It is no wonder then, that one of the more pressing issues in regard to the funding gap, is the fear being overlooked on an international scale, and that the plight of those struggling in crisis areas are being forgotten, as becomes clear in a statement from Kun Li, Head of Partnerships, Communication and Reporting for the World Food Program in Bangladesh.

Kun Li: "our fear is that we are forgotten you know, who is the global voice advocating for this group of people? There is none, right? So you know, if they don't do themselves, then what other means they can get their stories out?"

All in all, there is no easy fix for the funding gap, just as there is no easy fix for most of the crises that require humanitarian aid. But what is clear, is that governments all over the world must understand, that humanitarian aid isn't a luxury. It provides for the most basic needs to survive for as many people world wide, as there are European citizens today. Only a public consensus on giving aid where it is needed will ensure that governments do their part, and so far funding through UN member states is the only viable way to provide humanitarian aid across the globe. With only a fifth of funding having been found for 2024, even though half the year has passed, the outlook could hardly be bleaker, as Bithika Biswas, Head of the Rangpur Field Office of the World Food program summarizes in just two sentences.

Bithika Biswas: "If we do not get further funding for these particular beneficiaries, then we have to stop. But we will try to utilize the best use of the time we have still in hand so that they can carry on their business themselves."