The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the entire world to a screeching halt, and its effects have been absolutely devastating. While popular focus has been on the medical and political responses addressing the tremendous social and economic fallout from the crisis, its impact on the provision of life-saving aid to millions of people in already fragile and vulnerable contexts warrants further attention.
Last year, the United Nations (UN) estimated that approximately 167.6 million people across the globe would need some form of emergency assistance in 2020. This number is only likely to grow in the face of the current pandemic; the rapidly evolving outbreak is forcing aid agencies to devise new responses in existing crisis-torn areas and to re-think how the sector operates when resources are stretched on a global scale.
Operational Challenges
At the operational level, multiple humanitarian and development organizations are being pushed to significantly limit non-critical missions to reduce the exposure of their personnel and beneficiaries to the novel coronavirus. In South Sudan, for example, the government has restricted the entry of people from affected countries and UN staff currently on leave in these countries are being advised to stay back, unless they are deemed essential to operations. Similar staffing limits are being enforced in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, where foreign aid workers are either being evacuated or denied entry into certain provinces under internal risk management protocols, which is in turn affecting program activities.
In some cases, organizations have ceased operations completely. Earlier this month, the US Peace Corps, for the first time in its nearly 60-year history, temporarily suspended its operations and evacuated more than 7,000 volunteers from posts in nearly 60 countries due to coronavirus fears. UN peacekeeping missions in South Sudan (UNMISS) and the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) have put rotations of peacekeepers on hold, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has temporarily halted refugee resettlement programs as some host governments have stopped the intake of refugees and imposed travel restrictions as part of their official response.
Stricter community quarantine measures imposed by local governments have resulted in the delay of response programs, as aid workers are struggling to reach vulnerable populations. In the case of the Philippines, which over the last year has been struck with multiple earthquakes, a volcano eruption and the return of polio after a two-decade hiatus, the coronavirus outbreak has disrupted crucial vaccination campaigns for measles and polio and postponed cash grants programs for typhoon survivors until April or May.
Physical access constraints, such as the closure of borders and roads affect crucial supply routes for aid, leaving many people who are dependent on that assistance stuck in limbo. For instance, in Afghanistan, some organizations have already suspended livelihood programs that would have helped over 70,000 people. Cross-border operations from Turkey and Jordan are extremely important to reach civilians in Syria, with more than 3 million Syrians completely dependent on that aid. While the initial impact of border closures could be minimal given that the supplies delivered are expected to last for some time, the possible extension of such measures could have serious long-term consequences.
The Difficulty of Executing Preventative Measures
However, humanitarian actors and beneficiaries could encounter even more severe challenges in areas with endemic dire conditions. A pandemic makes managing refugee camps in such areas, which are already highly inconducive, even more difficult. Given that there are more than 70.8 million people displaced worldwide, a large proportion of them are housed in either official camps or camp-like settings. Bangladesh, for instance, is home to one of the world’s largest in Cox’s Bazaar, where nearly 900,000 Rohingyas reside in highly congested settlements.
Although the country has initiated a lockdown in these areas to contain the spread of the virus, sanitary precautions are already difficult to implement and basic resources such as water and soap are rare, making containment efforts recommended by the WHO (such as washing hands regularly, social-distancing, and isolation) next to impossible to execute if an outbreak occurs. Similar concerns are also on the rise in camps in Iraq, Greece, Somalia, and Nigeria, as the countries have recently reported fatalities from the disease.
A COVID-19 outbreak could also be catastrophic in Yemen and Syria, where crises have collectively left more than 35 million people in need of aid over the course of a decade. The humanitarian community in these regions is already overwhelmed with the task of trying to effectively address concerns such as food insecurity, communal violence, and mass displacement. The scaling back of programs, evacuation of non-essential aid workers, and increased restrictions on movements due to coronavirus fears are further inhibiting the ability of humanitarian organizations to deliver life-saving assistance to those who need it most.
Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, the lack of critical health infrastructure in both these contexts and the systematic targeting of hospitals and medical facilities through regular airstrikes and bombings, especially in Syria, has severely undermined relief efforts. Tackling COVID-19 under the constant and significant threat of airstrikes would be virtually impossible and create unprecedented levels of human suffering, which could completely inundate the already overburdened international humanitarian system.
Shifting Risk and Responsibility to Local Actors
Additionally, as more and more humanitarian personnel are forced to evacuate or work remotely, international organizations are increasingly reliant on greater burden-sharing with local actors to carry out vital tasks, who may not be adequately trained or prepared to do so. In Yemen and Syria, a portion of relief work is undertaken by local actors themselves, while in other areas, international organizations may be required to train their local partners in essential skills, as finding replacements becomes more difficult.
These circumstances may also create opportunities for the increased use of technology to assist in remote trainings and skill-building workshops. However, sustaining such efforts would require a great deal of time and money, both of which are extremely limited within the current context of rapidly deteriorating or highly vulnerable political, social, and medical conditions.
The Rising Global Humanitarian Financing Deficit
Compounding the already overwhelming challenges of this pandemic on the global humanitarian community is the harsh reality that funding may be severely impacted as countries may choose to prioritize their funds for coronavirus measures on the domestic front.
Earlier this week, the United Nations introduced the COVID-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan, amounting to $2 billion to mitigate the virus’ impact, particularly on fragile countries with weak health systems. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on donor countries to contribute to the fund and emphasized that “a global approach is the only way to fight coronavirus.”
Though a noble thought, contributions to UN agencies like UNICEF, UNHCR, and the WFP are voluntary, and traditionally large donor states are currently scrambling to secure funds as their own domestic spending on internal health responses is rapidly increasing. The United States, for instance, just announced a $2 trillion stimulus package to combat the economic impact of the virus. As the crisis threatens to cripple the world economy, its impact on countries’ contributions to the UN remains to be seen.
What Happens Next?
The coronavirus pandemic has created unprecedented uncertainty for all. Perhaps the only positive that has emerged from this pandemic is that it has exposed the world’s collective vulnerability, which should serve as a light-bulb moment for powerful nations across the globe. With humanitarian organizations now operating to provide emergency relief in places like Italy and the United States, an increased understanding of the vital work that aid personnel take on in complex crises abroad should hopefully stir donor states into taking real tangible action and making hard decisions for the greater good. While the disease has shown that it does not discriminate, there is little doubt that the severity of its impact will be astronomical in already fragile regions and for already vulnerable populations.
Image Source: UNICEF