On Tuesday, United Nations launched a $35 billion global appeal to help more than 235 million vulnerable people in 2021 including 10.5 million in Pakistan. UN is seeking $285.3 million for Pakistan where it is targeting about 3.3 million people as the “most vulnerable and fragile.”
A record 235 million people will need humanitarian assistance and protection next year, a near 40 percent increase in 2020, as per the UN appeal.
160 million people across 56 countries are included in the list of UN as the most vulnerable.
Read more: World Food Program Chief Warns of Famine Within the Next Year
The UN emergency relief chief Mark Lowcock said the 40 percent increase was “almost entirely from Covid-19”, which has had a particularly devastating impact on developing economies.
“The picture we are presenting is the bleakest and darkest perspective on humanitarian needs in the period ahead that we have ever set out.” He added, “That is a reflection of the fact that the Covid pandemic has wreaked carnage across the whole of the most fragile and vulnerable countries on the planet.”
However, the pandemic has forced one in 33 people to seek emergency relief, a significant increase from 1 in 45 at the launch of the Global Humanitarian Overview 2020, which was already the highest figure in decades.
The UN appeal says, “the global economic fallout will continue to have a large-scale socioeconomic impact” on Pakistan throughout 2021, “especially on people already living below the poverty line.”
The report added that economic stress would result in growing unemployment, poverty, and inflation. The UN chief insisted in a statement, although the humanitarian system had delivered “food, medicines, shelter, education and other essentials to tens of millions of people “the crisis is far from over”.
