With more and more people in need of humanitarian aid, and less and less cash available to provide it, the EU attempts to plug some of the funding gaps while pushing to work ‘smarter’.
In 2006, 31 million people around the world needed emergency humanitarian aid. This year, according to UN estimates, this figure will be almost eight times higher: a staggering 239 million people.
Overlapping crises
Doriana Somma is project manager at Missione Calcutta Onlus, an Italian NGO that operates in India, Kenya and Ukraine, among other countries. She paints a bleak picture in an interview with Radio 24, highlighting that the humanitarian sector is today facing an unprecedented crisis, with aid workers struggling to provide services to some of the most deprived people on the planet.
Somma adds that the global development context is changing too, with a series of overlapping crises making things even more complicated.
Doriana Somma, Project Manager at Missione Calcutta Onlus (in Italian):
“I would also like to mention that there are no longer isolated or sporadic emergencies. Armed conflicts cause forced migration; economic crises and climate change are constantly intertwined. So humanitarian organisations must adapt and find creative solutions, on extremely tight budgets, to deal with crises that are becoming ever-more protracted and complex and that ultimately take on a permanent character.”
When it comes to the crisis hotspots that affect the EU most directly, the major one is of course Ukraine. And humanitarian efforts there are clearly thwarted by the ongoing bombardments.
But the Middle East is close enough, and a new humanitarian crisis is mushrooming in that region too. We’re not just talking about Gaza, either – Lebanon is also hard hit, as Elisabeth Viinalass, the Middle East expert of Tallinn-based NGO Mondo, tells Kuku Radio.
Elisabeth Viinalass, Middle East Project Manager at Mondo (in Estonian):
“All of a sudden, a very large number of people in Lebanon – more than a million, in fact – were forced to relocate within the country. Since they fled so quickly, they couldn’t take much with them. And now people have nowhere to go; no food, no hygiene supplies; nothing. Where can they stay? Those who can are staying with family and friends. Others have found refuge in temporary accommodation centres, which are mostly based in school buildings. But there are also a lot of people who are simply sleeping on the streets in tents.”
And these domestic refugees come on top of all the refugees from neighbouring countries that Lebanon was already hosting.
Elisabeth Viinalass, Middle East Project Manager at Mondo (in Estonian):
“There are Palestinian refugees who arrived decades ago. There are approximately 400,000 of them. Then there are the Syrian refugees who arrived between 2011 and 2013. Around 1.5 million of them. This makes Lebanon the country with the highest number of refugees per square metre and per capita in the world.”
Money, money, money
Doriana Somma points out that, on top of the ever-increasing need for humanitarian support, resources to pay for this are dwindling. Indeed, a sense of ‘donor fatigue’ among the general public is regularly being reported by Europe’s NGOs, and this is not the only funding stream to be seeing a downturn.
Doriana Somma, Project Manager at Missione Calcutta Onlus (in Italian):
“Undoubtedly one of the most significant challenges to highlight is the reduction in international funding, which is plain for all to see: many governments are cutting their budgets for humanitarian aid and development cooperation, at a time when the number of highly vulnerable people is growing exponentially. Organisations undoubtedly find themselves having to make very tough and difficult choices: deciding which programmes to keep and which to close, and therefore who to prioritise and who, unfortunately, not to prioritise.”
It obviously made headline news around the world when US president Donald Trump controversially closed down USAID, the US Agency for International Development, pretty much overnight a year ago, along with slashing the country’s humanitarian aid budget. Just the previous year, under the Biden Administration, the US was providing some 38 per cent of all emergency assistance tracked by the UN.
While some American money continues to trickle in, for example via the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund, Oxfam warned in January that the radical US aid cuts could lead to one child under the age of five dying every 40 seconds by 2030.
The European Commission described the global humanitarian system as “at breaking point” on Wednesday (27 May), as it presented a new strategy meant to address the various challenges.
As a collective, the EU and its 27 member states are the leading donor of humanitarian aid to populations affected by disasters around the globe. These efforts receive strong and consistent support from EU citizens, with 91 per cent of respondents to a 2024 Eurobarometer survey considering this an important use of EU money.
One prong of Brussels’ new strategy is about making humanitarian aid more productive – in other words, doing more with less, but also boosting the efficiency of existing mechanisms (joint procurement, shared transport fleets and so on). For more cost-effective supply chains, the EU will introduce a ‘Humanitarian Supply Chain Charter’ and make its funding conditional on the sharing of more logistics data.
Safety and security
But funding is far from the only challenge the sector is facing. Let’s return to Somma from Missione Calcutta.
Doriana Somma, Project Manager at Missione Calcutta Onlus (in Italian):
“There is also a growing sense of operational insecurity. There are so many colleagues working in extremely difficult contexts, where international law – including international humanitarian law – is not respected. It is plain for all to see that hospitals, schools and civilian infrastructure of all kinds are being targeted, and humanitarian workers themselves are becoming targets. Obviously, this is a cause for great concern.”
This argument is backed up by David Montano Inturias, who is the Médecins du Monde coordinator for public health in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He illustrates some of the safety issues faced by his organisation’s humanitarian workers in the country, notably in the region most affected by the latest Ebola virus disease outbreak. RTBF shares his comments.
David Montano Inturias, Coordinator for Public Health in the DRC, Médecins du Monde (in French):
“The DRC has been in a chronic state of crisis for over 30 years. But it is true that, particularly now, in the east – in Goma and Bukavu, for example – the area has been taken over by the M23 movement, which complicates matters enormously. Support for development projects in the occupied areas is more or less non-existent, because these organisations are not officially recognised. Humanitarian staff are, at times, victims of armed robberies in the occupied areas, North and South Kivu, and Ituri too. There is a great deal of conflict and instability and a volatile security situation, which makes working in the community very difficult.”
According to the EU’s new ‘joint communication on humanitarian aid’ adopted on Wednesday, 334 humanitarian workers were killed, 192 were injured, 109 were kidnapped and 45 were unlawfully arrested in 2025. As such, another prong of the Commission’s strategy is to step up actions to protect aid workers.
Animal-borne outbreaks
Since we have touched on the subject of Ebola, it is worth mentioning that last Friday (22 May), the Commission announced the release of 15 million euros of emergency aid to subsidise medical interventions, prevention and screening in the DRC and Uganda, the countries hit by Ebola.
This most recent outbreak of the virus, which began just over a month ago and is believed to have originated in fruit bats, is already thought to have resulted in a few hundred deaths, primarily in the DRC.
EU-funded humanitarian flights have already transported medical supplies, laboratory equipment and protective gear to affected areas. And, as RTBF reports, a huge new delivery was coordinated between Brussels and UNICEF just last weekend.
Hadja Lahbib, Commissioner for Equality, Preparedness and Crisis Management (in French):
“Firstly, we have allocated an additional budget of 15 million to assist the Democratic Republic of the Congo, particularly in Ituri, where this new Ebola outbreak is taking place. This is a strain for which we have neither a vaccine nor a treatment. UNICEF supplies are currently being loaded, which the EU is transporting at its own expense. These consist mainly of tents, protective equipment and paracetamol. Everything needed to contain this outbreak and prevent it from spreading to neighbouring countries and becoming a pandemic.”
That was Hadja Lahbib, the EU commissioner for equality, preparedness and crisis management.
Another animal-borne virus making the news at the moment is, of course, Hantavirus.
On this subject, Canary Island-based epidemiologist Amós García Rojo speaks to esRadio Castilla y León in a bid to quell the public’s fears.
He explains that this virus primarily causes disease in rodents, but can be transmitted to humans through direct contact with rat faeces, urine or saliva. Either because humans inhale microscopic airborne particles from these sources, particularly in an enclosed space, or because they consume contaminated food. He acknowledges that person-to-person transmission has occurred in the Andes variant, but stresses that this transmission is not at all straightforward.
The first cruise passengers infected were likely on a bird-watching trip in Argentina, observing birds next to a landfill site where there were presumably rats.
García Rojo laments that public-health alerts such as these will continue to occur, and with increasing frequency. He lists a number of factors for this.
Amós García Rojo, Epidemiologist (in Spanish):
“The ongoing progression of climate change; the increasing number of animal diseases being transmitted to humans; the fact that poverty continues to have a devastating impact in certain parts of the world – like now with Ebola […]; the reality of globalisation; and the fact that certain human interventions in nature have a clear impact on the likelihood of this problem arising. For example, deforestation in the Amazon, one of the world’s great lungs, has allowed animals carrying certain viruses to come ever closer to humans. All these factors mean that we will continue to face crises of this nature with increasing frequency. Because unfortunately we are doing nothing to combat climate change, nor to tackle poverty, and neither are we taking seriously the need to consider human health as being linked to animal health and environmental health.”
Bothersome bears
And on the subject of our inability to maintain a respectful distance between human settlements and wild animals, there has been a recent spate of bear attacks in Eastern European countries.
A bear attacked a 72-year-old man in a remote area of northern Romania on 21 May, just 10 days after a 53-year-old woman was killed in a similar attack in the same area. There was also a fatal bear attack in Poland in late April.
Now it’s Bulgaria’s turn. BNR reports that a bear killed a young man on 16 May in a relatively urbanised area near the capital Sofia. Although the mountainous area is designated a park, houses are creeping ever higher up the slopes.
Our Bulgarian colleagues interview Dr Raycho Ganchev, an expert on the brown bear, who comments on these animals’ increasing desensitisation to humans.
Raycho Ganchev, Bear Expert (in Bulgarian):
“Wild animals, especially predators, tend to flee when a human approaches, when they smell a human, or when they hear noise made by a human. But we have witnessed that in recent years, bears have lost this respect for humans in Bulgaria – both in their territories and even in urbanised areas or on the outskirts of villages, towns and neighbourhoods in mountain regions.”
https://bnrnews.bg/main/post/474132/uvelichena-li-e-opasno-populatsiyata-na-mechki-u-nas
In a separate conversation, Ruslan Mihaylov, Secretary General of the Bulgarian Hunting and Fishing Union, points the finger at Brussels.
Ruslan Mihaylov, Secretary general of the Bulgarian Hunting and Fishing Union (in Bulgarian):
“For the past 19 years, the bear has been protected at the insistence of the EU. Since our accession 19 years ago, the bear has been designated a strictly protected species, and as such is subject to oversight by the Ministry of Environment and Water. But the Ministry of Environment and Water does not have the same network as the forestry services. It is unable to monitor and manage the populations in the various mountain ranges in the manner that they were regulated until 2007.”
He adds that, as a result, no one knows how many bears there actually are, and he firmly advocates culling those living close to human settlements.
This view is shared by many people in Romania, home to the largest bear population in the EU. After the ban on bear hunting in 2016, bear numbers have increased rapidly and currently sit at around three times the ‘optimal’ level. As the species’ traditional habitats in the Carpathian Mountains have become cramped, bears have moved towards urban settlements, sometimes far from their native mountains and forests. They roam the streets of cities, feed on rubbish and attack households. They have killed at least 27 people in Romania over the last two decades, and ten times that number have been seriously injured.
In recent years, the Romanian government has adopted several laws to keep the bear population in check, against a backdrop of protests by environmental organisations. In November last year, the government adopted an emergency ordinance that simplified the procedure for euthanising bears that posed a danger in inhabited areas.
Environment minister Diana Buzoianu explained that the new regulations were put in place to protect communities in case of imminent danger, but did not give people a green light to shoot them in other cases.
Diana Buzoianu, Romania’s Minister of the Environment (in Romanian):
“With this law, we did not mandate that bears be shot. We provided an option. We removed the requirement for a gradual approach, but emergency committees can still determine there is no danger and decide not to shoot bears that are, for example, between one and two years old, if they deem there is no risk to the community. This is an assessment to be conducted by the emergency committee, which includes the mayor, a vet, a national forest service representative and the police.”
This said, President Nicuşor Dan is mounting a legal challenge to a new law, adopted last month, that would allow twice as many bears to be hunted ’preventively’ this year and next, says Radio România.
The head of state claims that the law violates both Romanian law and European law by setting quotas in the absence of detailed scientific justifications and periodic assessments of the bear population.
