📋 Tender Overview
United Nations humanitarian aid coordination office (UN OCHA) will publish its annual Global Humanitarian Overview for 2025, which summarises the state of humanitarian suffering around the world, and outlines the level of financial support currently available for life-saving efforts.
As of 17 October 2024, only 35 per cent of the UN’s existing global appeal is funded. The enormous gap in resourcing directly impacts millions of people experiencing crises around the world.
To coincide with the UN’s call for action, ACT Alliance and Caritas Internationalis – two leading networks of Christian faith-based organisations in solidarity and partnership with national and local partner organisations – call on world leaders, governments and the UN system funding the humanitarian response, to urgently strengthen support for Sudan, the world’s largest humanitarian crisis – and specifically to local community groups at the frontline of the response.
Firstly, increased attention must be given to the catastrophic situation in Sudan, and the humanitarian response which is chronically underfunded.
Secondly, donor governments, UN agencies and other international humanitarian organisations need to change the ways they work, to better support local frontline responders such as churches, women’s organisations, youth networks and other community-based groups that are the backbone of the humanitarian response in Sudan and other crisis-hit countries.
To get resources to these local groups, faith leaders, and faith-based organizations, ACT Alliance and Caritas Internationalis are engaged in a joint appeal to provide cash support, protection, water and hygiene to thousands of displaced Sudanese. This includes support to local community groups and national organisations working in areas of the country where there is no UN agency presence, and in some cases no other international NGOs.
Evidence from other countries clearly shows that working with local communities is a highly effective and empowering method of providing relief and long-term stability. By maximising local relationships and knowledge and encouraging community engagement ACT and Caritas also act as a connector into UN’s operations in communities in the country too.
“As the UN and donor governments take stock of global humanitarian needs, we urge them to increase support for local community groups, who are the first responders but until now receive inadequate support from the international system. Recent years have seen an alarming trend towards aid reduction by multiple governments cutting their aid budgets at just the same time as conflict, famine and the impacts of the climate crisis are spreading. The catastrophic situation in what we are seeing right now in Sudan illustrates this perfect storm of increasing unmet humanitarian needs, and inadequate support to local first responders. This is also the challenge we see in the DRC, South Sudan, Syria and many other places. We strongly back the UN’s call for support by donors, but we need to find ways to break through the bureaucracy and act in solidarity with local groups on the ground that have the access to communities in need and are saving lives. Through our joint partnership with local first responders in Sudan, Caritas Internationalis and the ACT Alliance we are doing all we can, but without more resources it remains a drop in an immense ocean of human suffering and chronic injustice.” Christian Modino Hok, Humanitarian Director, Caritas Internationalis.
“The UN’s Global Humanitarian Overview helps to shine a spotlight on humanitarian needs across the world. In most wealthy donor countries, the emergencies that get the media spotlight and come to public attention often do so often for political reasons. The response to crises in countries neighbouring wealthy states or those that hold geo-political significance to powerful governments get support, whilst life-saving efforts elsewhere are ignored and the responses to those crises continue to struggle. The cruel consequence of this is that lives are lost unnecessarily that could have otherwise been saved. Nowhere is this disparity between global political or public attention and the unmet the humanitarian needs and the funds raised to date greater than in Sudan. Sudan is where the largest displacement crisis in the world continues to unfold, but still the situation in Sudan remains underreported. One in every five people in Sudan is displaced, an estimated 24 million people are in acute need of food, and the UN has declared famine in parts of the country. As the two largest networks of Christian faith-based humanitarian organisations, ACT Alliance and Caritas Internationalis, working with members and their local partners working across in Sudan in coordination with UN efforts urgently need support to be able to provide lifesaving assistance. Our joint humanitarian appeal remains critically underfunded at a time when the need to scale up this life-saving humanitarian response has never been greater. Niall O’Rourke, Head of Humanitarian Affairs, ACT Alliance.
