10% of the staff of non -governmental organizations (NGOs) around the world have lost their jobs only in February due to the cuts applied to international humanitarian aid, Thomas Fletcher, deputy secretary general for humanitarian matters, said on Wednesday, at a press conference at the UN Headquarters.
Fletcher referred not only to the cuts of the Trump administration -which on Tuesday announced that it eliminated 83%of its foreign aid programs -but also, although it did not quote them, which has undertaken the governments of the United Kingdom (a 40%reduction), France (37%) or Netherlands (30%).
“And between the UN family and our partners, we are making decisions up to what lives we are going to prioritize, what lives we will try to save,” said Fletcher, who did not hesitate to say that “we are coming out of a humanitarian decade” and entering “in the era of indifference.”
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10% of NGO personnel in the world have lost their jobs only in February
The humanitarian manager acknowledged that the UN must “expand the base” of donors, since the United States supplied last year almost half of the global humanitarian aid budget.
To that end, he said he had traveled two weeks ago to the Persian Gulf, where the rich oil states have never been among the lists of major donors in the world, dominated by the US, European countries, Japan or Canada.
Fletcher acknowledged that there is a lot of work to do in relation to profiling the objectives and receptors of the aid in each case so that the funds go “to the programs that are really needed to support”, in response to criticism about the bureaucracy and the waste of money in these assistance programs.
“I think that at this time we have ahead, these weeks, they will define the way we emerge as a humanitarian movement, from our challenges to our legitimacy, our morals and our destiny,” said Fletcher.
With EFE information.
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