UN / GING HUMANITARIAN FUNDING

The UN humanitarian operations director John Ging hoped to end the “hand-wringing” discussion that the world was “too poor to help those who are being killed, maimed, injured, starving, displaced, needing nothing more than the most basic humanitarian assistance.” UNIFEED

• Categories: News & Features / News Stories / Unifeed
• Video Length: 00:02:40
• Production Date: 16 June 2017
• Asset Language: English
• Personal Subject: JOHN GING
• Corporate Name: OFFICE FOR THE COORDINATION OF HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS - OCHA
• Subject Topical: CONFLICT SITUATION; HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS; HUMANITARIAN CRISIS
• Geographic Subject: CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC; DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
• MAMS Id: 1911287
• Parent Id: 1911287
• Alternate Title: unifeed170616b

Description

STORY: UN / GING HUMANITARIAN FUNDING
TRT: 02:40
SOURCE: UNIFEED
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS

DATELINE: 16 JUNE 2017, NEW YORK CITY

Shotlist

RECENT - NEW YORK CITY

1. Wide shot, UNHQ exterior

16 JUNE 2017, NEW YORK CITY

2. Wide shot, Ging and UN spokesperson at dais
3. SOUNDBITE (English) John Ging, Director of Operations, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA):
“As anyone calls for an increase in funding the war machinery, they must, in my view, at least call for an increase in the funding of humanitarian assistance; at least to the level that has been committed to by all of our member states in the framework of financing the Sustainable Development Goals, because otherwise, we are definitely not going to meet our target of leaving nobody behind in these two countries alone by 2030. It has to be funded.”
4. Med shot, journalist asking question
5. SOUNDBITE (English) John Ging, Director of Operations, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA):
“I’m really hoping that we can get out of this circular discussion that is going nowhere that is simply hand-wringing on the fact that we are too poor to help those who are being killed, maimed, injured, starving, displaced, needing nothing more than the most basic humanitarian assistance. Surely we have the humanity in our wealth to find the way to actually make these allocations that are required.”
6. Wide shot, Ging and UN spokesperson at dais
7. SOUNDBITE (English) John Ging, Director of Operations, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA):
“You know that there’s 580,000 children under the age of five across the Sahel died lasted year from preventable disease, hunger, and the effects of our inability to mobilize very meagre support to keep those children alive. Are we that impoverished in the world that we are not able to do that? I’m being told on a daily basis ‘yes.’ I don’t believe it. I don’t believe that the world is so poor that it cannot allocate 22 billion dollars from the global GDP to humanitarian action. I don’t believe that.”
8. Med shot, journalist asking question
9. SOUNDBITE (English) John Ging, Director of Operations, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA):
“This crisis does very much falls on the shoulders of the international community when it comes to resourcing. And again as alarming and as massive as the scale of the crisis is, sadly and unacceptably we are not seeing anything like the level of funding for such a crisis.”
10. Wide shot, press room

Storyline

The UN humanitarian operations director John Ging hoped to end the “hand-wringing” discussion that the world was “too poor to help those who are being killed, maimed, injured, starving, displaced, needing nothing more than the most basic humanitarian assistance.”

Speaking to reporters following a recent visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic (CAR), Ging said he was disappointed EU chief Jean-Claude Junker’s statement calling on European countries to increase defence spending above the current 1.3 percent average of their GDP. He wished Junker would have also appealed to EU members to meet their stated responsibility of 0.7 percent of their GDP on humanitarian funding. He noted, “As anyone calls for an increase in funding the war machinery, they must, in my view, at least call for an increase in the funding of humanitarian assistance.”

Ging appealed to all countries around the world, especially the G-20 and G-7, to increase their funding of humanitarian assistance to the levels they committed to in financing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), otherwise “we are definitely not going to meet our target of leaving nobody behind in these two countries alone by 2030.”

The humanitarian operations director said the crises in the DRC and the CAR were both fast moving and deteriorating. In the DRC, He said 7.3 million are in need of humanitarian with some 5.9 million severely food insecure, 1.9 million children are severely acutely malnourished representing 12 percent of the global caseload, and around 3.7 million people are internally displaced. Ging noted that the infrastructure in the country was very weak, especially in health services; however he acknowledged the Government’s effectiveness in responding the Ebola outbreak. He stressed that crisis in the DRC “very much falls on the shoulders of the international community when it comes to resourcing”. He said of the 812 million USD appeal for 2017, only 20 percent of funding and added that “as alarming and as massive as the scale of the crisis is, sadly and unacceptably we are not seeing anything like the level of funding for such a crisis.”