Our Global Humanitarian Nightmare

The System Cannot Hold

This Wednesday, the United Nations is hosting a “pledging conference” for the Horn of Africa. Specifically, humanitarian relief agencies are seeking to raise $7 billion to provide for the basic humanitarian needs of people in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia whose lives and livelihoods are being threatened by an epic drought.

This is an astronomical sum.

When I started covering the UN as a reporter back in 2005, the total money required to respond to all humanitarian disasters everywhere in the world was $5.98 billion. Now, 18 years later, humanitarian agencies need $7 billion for just one disaster.

To be sure, the drought in the Horn of Africa is calamitous. The current drought began in October 2020 and has only gotten bigger since then. It’s now the worst drought in the region since the 1980s, which lead to a famine in Ethiopia that killed 1 million people between 1983 and 1985. Today, at least 43.3 million people require lifesaving assistance across Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia. Hence, …