Turkey third largest international donor in humanitarian assistance
by Daily Sabah
ISTANBULSep 11, 2014 - 12:00 am GMT+3
by Daily Sabah
Sep 11, 2014 12:00 am
Turkish government becomes the third largest international donor after the U.S. and U.K. in 2013, accounting for 7.3 percent of the total level of humanitarian assistance, according to the Global Humanitarian Assistance (GHA) Report 2014.
Turkey's humanitarian spending increased by $591 million (TL 1.3 billion) to $1.6 billion in 2013. A significant part of this increase stems from Turkey's assistance to Syrian refugees inside the country, amounting to over 1 million people, the report says. Turkey also provides a substantial of amount finance to Gaza to help them rebuild the ravaged infrastructure, after Israel's recent military onslaught on the Gaza Strip. One of Turkey's recent aid campaigns which was led by the prime ministery for example, raised $56 million for the Gazans, in a limited amount of time. Other aid agencies have been continuing to provide further funding for the region.
Turkey has also opened its doors to various ethnic groups fleeing from the ISIS slaughter, with the Yazidi community being one of these. According to estimates, 10,000 Yazidis crossed the border into Turkey.
The U.S. government continues to maintain its rank as the largest donor with its assistance of $4.7 million in 2013. It provided 29 percent of the total government humanitarian assistance in that year. The U.S. government was followed by the governments of U.K. ($1.8 billion), Turkey ($1.6 billion), Japan ($1.1 billion) and Germany ($949 million). Government donors accounted for three quarters of the total amount of humanitarian assistance, contributing $16.4 billion, which is a rise of 24 percent from 2012. Private sources, on the other hand, provided an estimated $5.6 billion, a 35 percent increase from 2012, according to the report.
Despite the record level of international assistance amounting to $22 billion in 2013, over a third of the estimated humanitarian needs was not met. U.N.-coordinated appeals targeted 78 million people for assistance in 2013 and called for $13.2 billion in funding, whereas only 65 percent of this funding appeal was met.
The top 20 recipients of international humanitarian response over the 2003-2012 period accounted for 75 percent of all country-allocated humanitarian assistance. Some countries are consistently in the top 20 due to protracted or recurrent crises. Amongst these are Sudan, Afghanistan, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Ethiopia and Somalia. Major crises have also propelled others into the list more recently, including Syria, Jordan and the recently independent South Sudan.
Syria received $1.5 billion in aid in 2012 – the largest amount of international humanitarian assistance received by a single crisis that year, the GHA report indicates. The 2013 data, however, will show a significant rise in funding for Syria as the conflict escalated going into its third year, according to the report.
Various humanitarian aid foundations in Turkey have been for years providing countries in major crises with essential needs as well as donations. Newly elected Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu recently said, "The name of the diplomacy that I carried out [during his tenure as foreign minister] is 'humanitarian diplomacy.' "
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