When people have to leave their homes and suddenly lose all their belongings, when water supplies and sanitation are no longer guaranteed, when the population suffers from hunger and children become seriously ill, those affected are in urgent need of humanitarian aid. Aid that UNICEF is only able to provide thanks to voluntary contributions. But what emergency relief measures have Swiss people, companies and foundations funded over the past decade through their donations to UNICEF Switzerland and Liechtenstein, and what precisely has UNICEF used the donations for? This blog post describes the biggest natural disasters, conflicts and crises of the past 10 years.
The last decade has been shaped by droughts, floods, epidemics, hurricanes and earthquakes. In addition in 2022, more than 400 million children were living in conflict zones worldwide, whilst around 36.5 million children had been displaced from their homes. An estimated one billion children are extremely exposed to the effects of climate change, while the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine will also continue to be painfully felt in the affected countries for years, if not decades, to come. It is always the population that suffers, and in particular children most of all.
Thanks to the support of private individuals, companies and foundations over the past 10 years, UNICEF Switzerland and Liechtenstein has collected donations for the following particular emergency relief measures, and thus helped alleviate the plight of these children.
The Philippines is one of the top 10 regions in the world most vulnerable to natural disasters. On November 8, 2013, Typhoon Haiyan destroyed the livelihoods of six million children. Haiyan was one of the most devastating storms in history, destroying villages, hospitals and schools. The islands of the Visayas group in the eastern and central Philippines suffered the most extensive damage. Houses were flattened, power lines knocked down and communications systems destroyed. Haiyan left countless injured and claimed the lives of several thousand people.
In the first six months after the typhoon, UNICEF and its partners achieved a great deal. One million people were supplied with drinking water, almost 100,000 people were given access to latrines, and 83,000 children were vaccinated against measles. UNICEF provided 470,000 children with toys and learning materials, and 135,000 children attended emergency schools. After the disaster, 128 children’s centers were set up, and were attended on a regular basis by 25,000 children. As part of a pilot program, more than 15,000 impoverished families received a monthly payment of CHF 80 to help them buy food and rebuild their lives.
It was a dark chapter for Liberia. The Ebola virus made its way southeast from Sierra Leone and Guinea, and across the border. The epidemic proved to be the worst and deadliest Ebola outbreak in human history. Liberia closed its borders, and the government ordered the temporary closure of all schools in the country. The deadly fever claimed the lives of over 11,000 people worldwide, including 4,800 in Liberia.
UNICEF was at the forefront of the response to the Ebola outbreak and the measures to contain it as quickly as possible. The UN children’s agency distributed bottles of chlorine for handwashing and domestic water treatment, as well as bars of soap. Since many people were unaware of the disease, did not believe it existed or did not know what to do, UNICEF launched an intensive awareness and education campaign. UNICEF staff distributed leaflets on the street or via a door-to-door campaign, enabling them to disseminate information about the Ebola virus. Radio stations provided information about the risks of infection and preventive measures. UNICEF also continued to lobby the authorities and religious leaders until everyone was aware of the facts.
Two major earthquakes struck Nepal on April 25 and May 12, 2015. More than 8 million people were affected, and almost 9,000 people lost their lives. 600,000 families were made homeless overnight. In the worst affected areas, a total of 1.7 million children were in urgent need of humanitarian aid. Homes, schools and vital infrastructure such as hospitals were severely damaged or destroyed.
UNICEF worked with the government and other partner organizations to help secure water and food supplies. The UN children’s aid agency provided sanitation, tents and tarpaulins for hospitals and other facilities. UNICEF also provided emergency medical equipment, built child-friendly spaces and equipped these with toys. 1,400 emergency classrooms were built, enabling 135,000 children to continue their education. UNICEF also helped identify children who had been separated from their families.
Since 2015, the people of Yemen have been suffering from a civil war involving international actors. The country is still experiencing one of the biggest humanitarian crises in the world: At the end of 2022, around 23.4 million people were in need of aid, including almost 13 million children. 9.2 million children do not have access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene services. The country continues to experience regular outbreaks of cholera, measles, diphtheria and other vaccine-preventable diseases. Over the past eight years, more than 11,000 children have been killed or injured in the war, an average of four children per day. More than 500,000 children under the age of five are suffering from severe acute malnutrition and are struggling to survive.
After eight years of conflict, state infrastructures have largely collapsed, and fewer than half of all health facilities remain functional. UNICEF staff in Yemen are working tirelessly with partner organizations to provide clean drinking water, procure petrol for public water pumps and install sanitation facilities. In addition, malnourished children are being given therapeutic food and vitamins. Mobile teams are delivering food, medicine and hygiene items to hard-to-reach areas. Together with the Ministry of Education, UNICEF is trying to ensure that as many children as possible have access to schooling.
A massive movement of refugees from the Syrian Arab Republic towards Europe first began in 2015, reaching its peak in 2016. To date, the armed conflict in Syria has already lasted almost 12 years. More than 13.4 million people, including 6.1 million children, were in need of humanitarian assistance at the end of 2022. For years now, seven million people - 3.1 million of which are children - have been living with their families under the most difficult conditions in neighboring countries, having fled there from Syria. It is children in particular who suffer most from the consequences of conflict. Many girls and boys from Syria know nothing but war and have already had to flee several times. They are exhausted, often malnourished and susceptible to illness.
The need for humanitarian aid has increased by more than a quarter since 2020 due to the economic crisis, ongoing violence in the northwestern region and other parts of Syria, mass displacement, destroyed public services and COVID-19. Ninety percent of the population are now living below the poverty line. 90,000 children are suffering from acute malnutrition, and 4.5 million children are not attending school.
UNICEF is working on the front line for children and their families in Syria, providing them with clean water, medicines, polio vaccinations, clothing, sanitation facilities and specialized nutrition for malnourished children. UNICEF is also offering psychosocial care for traumatized children and investing significantly in school education. UNICEF is also present in neighboring countries, where it provides refugee families from Syria with basic necessities.
The humanitarian situation in Somalia, South Sudan and Nigeria worsened dramatically in 2017. South Sudan, the youngest country in the world, failed to settle down. With armed clashes, an impending hunger crisis and dangerous diseases such as cholera, the lives of more than six million people were endangered. Children were hardest hit by the country’s dramatic food situation. The conflict in Nigeria also escalated. In the northeastern part of the country alone, around two million people were in need of aid. Girls and boys were at risk of being recruited by the rebels and abused as soldiers, suicide bombers or war slaves. Girls were threatened with rape and were often forced to carry out suicide attacks. In Somalia, an estimated 6.2 million people were affected by the prolonged drought and related food shortages.
The joint, cross-regional efforts of UNICEF and the World Food Programme in the three countries included supplying food and water to hundreds of thousands of people, and providing support for education, water and sanitation. The drought in Somalia and across the Horn of Africa, also led to an increase in waterborne diseases. UNICEF and the World Food Programme worked together to scale up their activities in accessible areas where millions of lives are at risk.
On September 28, 2018, the Indonesian island of Sulawesi was hit by a magnitude 7.4 earthquake, followed by a tsunami with waves up to six meters high. The natural disaster claimed the lives of more than 2,000 people. Around 70,000 homes were destroyed or severely damaged, and over 200,000 people were forced to leave their homes. One month later, an estimated 375,000 children located near the epicenter remained in urgent need of assistance. 100,000 girls and boys required psychosocial support in order to properly process what they had experienced.
Around 5,000 children either lost or were separated from their relatives as a result of the earthquake. UNICEF responded as quickly as possible, setting up 12 units in the disaster zone to identify unaccompanied children and those that had been separated from their families. These places were also used as safe spaces where children could play and relax. Another priority for UNICEF was enabling children to go back to school, an important step towards restoring normality in their everyday lives. Within a month, UNICEF had delivered 200 school tents, 200 School-in-a-Box kits and 50 Kindergarten-in-a-Box kits with learning materials and toys to the region. A further 250 school tents were set up during the weeks that followed.
Cyclone Idai caused dramatic flooding in southern Africa on March 14, 2019, notably in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe. The severe cyclone left 240,000 destroyed homes, dirty water and well over a million children in need in its wake. 600 people were killed, and large swathes of the region were flooded. In April, just weeks after Idai, Mozambique was hit by a second storm named Hurricane Kenneth. More than 500 cases of cholera were reported shortly afterwards.
In the aftermath of the devastating catastrophe, UNICEF aid workers worked around the clock. There was hardly any drinking water, and the teams did their utmost to prevent the outbreak of diseases such as cholera, which are particularly life-threatening for the youngest children. UNICEF set up 11 cholera treatment centers and provided cholera tablets and medicines. The UN children’s aid agency also procured and sent around one million vaccine doses, and launched a large-scale cholera vaccination campaign that prevented the disease from developing into an epidemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic shattered the lives of children and their families around the globe. Children were not the face of this pandemic, but they became its biggest victims. The pandemic had an impact on all aspects of their daily lives: their education, their health, their nutrition and, last but not least, their wellbeing. Three years after the outbreak of the pandemic, governments particularly in low-income countries, are struggling to recover from the economic and social impact of COVID-19. Schoolchildren have lost around two billion hours of teaching since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent school closures, and these figures continue to is rise. UNICEF has calculated that progress in education and the quality of education alone have been set back 25 years. Child labor and early marriage have also increased once again. Child poverty reached a new high in 2022, with an estimated 356 million children living in extreme poverty.
UNICEF has worked from the outset to eliminate the major inequalities in terms of access to COVID-19 vaccines, tests, treatment and personal protective equipment, while at the same time strengthening health systems and programs. UNICEF has also worked with experts to produce the latest data, insights and analysis for policy makers, and provide reliable guidance and support to parents and caregivers in order to keep children and their families healthy.
Afghanistan has long been one of the worst places in the world to be a child. After decades of conflict and natural disasters, the long-standing crisis in Afghanistan escalated in the summer of 2021. Millions of people are now in need of even more protection and rapid humanitarian aid. The national child mortality rate is one of the highest in the world. Many children do not have enough to eat, with some of them suffering from life-threatening malnutrition. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled within the country or to neighboring countries. This has serious consequences for children: 13 million girls and boys are in urgent need of humanitarian aid. By the end of 2022, one million children, half of all infants, could be so severely malnourished that their lives could be in danger.
UNICEF has been working continuously in Afghanistan for around 70 years with a large team of international and national staff. UNICEF and its partners are continuing to provide comprehensive aid despite the currently fragile security situation. For 2023, US$1.65 billion is required to meet the humanitarian needs of 19 million people in Afghanistan. This is the highest level of humanitarian need ever recorded for a country. UNICEF is supplying clean drinking water, providing life-saving peanut paste for malnourished children, and vaccinating babies and infants. UNICEF is also helping to equip child-friendly spaces, nutrition centers and schools, and ensuring that health facilities are able to remain open.
The situation for children in Ukraine is dramatic. Since the war broke out in February 2022, they have been exposed to attacks in homes, hospitals and schools. The country’s girls and boys are facing a life-threatening state of emergency. Many Ukrainian children have already been injured or killed. However, the majority of children in Ukraine have now fled, either to a different part of the country or to a neighboring country. By November 2022, 7.7 million Ukrainian refugees had been registered across Europe, 90 percent of them women and children.
Given the multifaceted nature of the emergency and the ongoing hostilities, the situation remains extremely complex. An estimated 17.6 million people in Ukraine, including 3.2 million children and 1.6 million internally displaced persons, will require humanitarian aid in 2023. UNICEF is supporting health facilities and water, sanitation and hygiene programs for 11 million people. An estimated 9.3 million people will require food and help to secure their livelihoods. They urgently need protection, including special support for children and young people who are unaccompanied or separated from their parents, as well as psychosocial care.
East Africa is experiencing the worst drought in recent history, after four consecutive failed rainy seasons in parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. It currently looks as though it will also remain dry for the fifth rainy season in a row. The crisis has devastating consequences for the population: In Somalia alone, an estimated 7.7 million people, including 5.1 million children, will need humanitarian aid in 2023 due to the devastating effects of the ongoing drought, conflict, displacement and the COVID-19 pandemic. Around 6.7 million people are affected by severe food insecurity. Women and children, who account for over 80 percent of the more than one million people displaced by the drought, continue to bear the brunt of the crisis.
Providing targeted aid is possible, for example with special foods such as the energy-rich peanut paste Plumpy’Nut, which helps infants rapidly regain their strength. In the long term, UNICEF can support health facilities and medical personnel. UNICEF is providing the population with clean water, which is essential for survival and protects them from many life-threatening diseases. UNICEF is also supplying hygiene items and medicines to contain the spread of diseases such as cholera and other serious diarrhea-related conditions.
