AFP/Geneva

The UN has appealed for $16.4bn (€13.4bn) to provide aid to nearly 60mn people worldwide next year, with almost half the amount aimed at helping victims of Syria’s drawn-out conflict.
“The rising scale of need is outpacing our capacity to respond,” warned United Nations humanitarian chief Valerie Amos, stressing that 2014 has been marked by a sharp rise in the number of people affected by violent conflicts.
Some 102mn people worldwide were in need of aid at the end of November, she told reporters in Geneva.
The global appeal from UN agencies and other humanitarian organisations aims to gather funds to help at least 57.5mn of the most vulnerable across 22 countries.
Yesterday’s appeal did not however include the needs in Djibouti and the nine countries in Africa’s Sahel region, including Nigeria and Mali, which will be addressed in a separate appeal in February, the UN said.
A full $7.2bn of the amount requested for 2015 will be aimed at helping an estimated 18.2mn people victimised by Syria’s bloody civil war, which erupted in March 2011.
The appeal is calling for $2.8bn to help 12.2mn people inside the war-ravaged country next year, including 7.6mn people who have been internally displaced.
Another $4.4mn will be needed to help more than 3mn Syrian refugees and some three million vulnerable people in overwhelmed host communities in neighbouring countries, the appeal said.
Helping millions of people affected by other crises will also require a large cash injection next year, with Syria’s neighbour Iraq figuring high on the list.
The crises in Central African Republic and South Sudan are also listed in the appeal, as is the spiralling conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Crises in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, the occupied Palestinian territories, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen will also require funds next year.
“This is not business as usual in the humanitarian world,” said Antonio Guterres, head of the UN refugee agency.
The amount requested for 2015 dwarfs the $12.9bn requested last December in the appeal for 2014.
Throughout a year that has seen millions more people flee violence and become dependent on aid to survive, those need estimates have since swelled to $17.9bn to help over 76mn people.
Only 52% of that updated appeal has been funded, the UN said, highlighting a growing gap between needs and the resources available to cover them.
However, Amos announced that an emergency appeal to the public had closed a $64mn funding shortfall that caused the UN World Food Programme last week to suspend food aid to 1.7mn Syrian refugees.