MSF, which is boycotting the event, said the summit risked being just a “fig leaf” for the world’s failure on humanitarian action.
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That’s according to ActionAid, which issued a statement last night declaring it’s disappointment in the lack of female voices being heard at the two-day World Humanitarian Summit that kicked off in Istanbul this week.
But it’s also supposed to enlist the aid community in the U.N.’s longstanding goal of ending need.
Fatma Yılmaz-Elmas, Researcher of the Center for European Studies at USAK (International Strategic Research Organization), indicated that it would not be wrong to say that migration flow has evolved into “crisis” due to the reactive, preservative and unilateral solutions which have been called upon to solve the recent migrant wave.
The World Humanitarian Summit is expected to mark a turning point in how the global community prepares and faces crises, conflicts, natural disasters and population movements to prevent human suffering.
Oxfam GB’s chief executive, Mark Goldring, said: “This summit needs to be more than an expensive talking shop by tackling the repeated failure of governments to resolve conflicts and end the culture of impunity in which civilians are killed without outcome”.
Globally roughly 60 million people have been forced to abandon their homes and in all “130 million need help in order to survive”, Ban said. Helping victims of violence, she notes, is another matter.
But Turkey has come under scrutiny at a time when the migrant crisis dominates the global agenda, a European Union-Turkey deal to address the problem faces growing controversy and the conflict in Syria, which numerous refugees have fled, grinds on. Ten years ago, some 80 percent of humanitarian aid money and effort went to victims of natural disasters.
That, observers say, is bad news for the United Nations, which is hoping to secure pledges to cover a projected shortfall in billions of dollars needed by its agencies to deal with the refugee crisis.
Seoul promised to raise the annual aid from US$900,000 in 2015 to US$2 million in 2016 to the United Nations relief fund for countries suffering from humanitarian crises.
Achieving “The Grand Bargain”, as it is called, may be one of the few small victories that come out of Istanbul.
But not everyone has signed on.
Doctors Without Borders sees it differently. MSF says in 2016 alone there have been 14 bombings or attacks on health facilities in Syria and Yemen.
This first-ever summit is expected to mark a turning point in how the worldwide community prepares and faces crises, conflicts, natural disasters and population movements to prevent human suffering.
The Red Cross applauded the summit for giving increased recognition to the work of local aid groups and for emphasising the need to put communities at the centre of aid work – which it said should strengthen response. She’s not sure this summit can fix that. “And we know that if we don’t address conflict more effectively we will not get ahead of the spiraling unmet needs”.
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed hope that the summit will prove a “turning point” and encouraged more countries to share the burden of emergency response.
