Currently, the humanitarian response plans and appeals for 2016 are seeking over $19.8 billion to meet the needs of 89.4 million people across 37 countries. The figures may increase in the course of 2016. As of 29 January, $50 million has been received for the appeals.
In January 2015, the UN-coordinated inter-agency appeals required $16.4 billion to meet the needs of 57.5 million people across 22 countries.
The year ended with requirements at $19.9 billion, an increase of $3.5 billion, to meet the needs of 82 million people in 38 countries.
As of 29 January, 21 humanitarian response plans (HRPs) and six refugee response plans (RRPs) for 2016 have been published. Eighteen of them are already being tracked by the Financial Tracking Service (FTS). Of these, early recipients of funding include: Nigeria (4 per cent funded), Cameroon (3 per cent), Niger (2 per cent), Libya, Chad and Somalia (all at 1 per cent).
Further response plans are being finalised and will be available online in the coming weeks.
Sectors benefitting from early funding have been those of agriculture, protection and human rights, shelter and non-food items, water and sanitation, food and health.
So far in 2016, the global humanitarian reported contributions are over $1.3 billion, with approximately $261 million in outstanding pledges. These contributions are reported towards bilateral funding, the Red Cross movement, and other funding mechanisms including for NGOs outside the UN-coordinated appeals framework.
As reported to FTS, the UN coordinated appeals have been consistently funded on average at 62 per cent regardless of the total requirement per year, and despite its five-fold increase over the last five years. 2015 saw the lowest coverage, closing the year at 53 percent (there may be adjustments to these final figures). The total funds received increased by 93 percent from $5.6 billion in 2011 to a highest $10.8 billion in 2014. It is expected that FTS will receive more funding reports attributed to 2015 appeals over the course of this year. All donors and operational partners are encouraged to report their contributions to FTS in a timely manner to ensure an up-to-date reflection of the funding status.
Meanwhile by 29 January, donors had pledged almost $250 million towards the CERF for 2016, of which some $76 million has already been received. In January, CERF allocated almost $9 million in rapid response grants and an additional $100 million to sustain life-saving relief for up to 4.5 million people in nine severely underfunded crises where levels of vulnerability are alarmingly high and available resources for humanitarian response are critically low.