The coronavirus, coupled with climate change and conflict, is expected to exacerbate long-term crises in many developing countries next year, according to a new report from the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a major US humanitarian group.
Despite the severity of the pandemic, the direct impact of Covid-19 in areas where the IRC operates was less damaging than feared, the organization’s CEO David Milliband said Tuesday. But it had disastrous side effects, he added, including disrupting supply chains, causing food insecurity in some countries and driving people out of hospitals, resulting in poor treatment of other diseases, including malaria.
Many of these countries are deteriorating in the countries listed on IRC’s annual emergency alert list, which identifies places at risk of humanitarian disaster. For example, extreme poverty caused by lockdowns and border closures could lead to famines in South Sudan, Burkina Faso and Yemen, it warns.
Yemen is at the top of the organization’s watchlist this year, leading to particular concern as a nation also plagued by years of war. Conflict-torn Afghanistan, Syria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia are the top five countries.
In total, the 20 countries on the IRC list represent only 10% of the world’s population, but represent 85% of those in humanitarian need. “Watchlist 2021 shows the world is facing unprecedented humanitarian emergencies as well as a political crisis of inaction and global withdrawal from humanitarian commitments,” the IRC said in a statement Monday.
While Milliband described the development of Covid-19 vaccines as a hugely positive story due to the cooperation of private companies and public entities in researching and developing a wide variety of vaccines in record time, he emphasized the difficulty of securing and measuring doses. distribute for countries where both funding and health infrastructure are limited.
Asked by CNN about the potential delivery of vaccines to developing countries next year, the IRC chief was not optimistic. “A supply shortage of Covid-19 vaccines means that the vast majority of people in vulnerable and humanitarian contexts – and in low-income and many middle-income states – will not have access to a Covid-19 vaccine by 2021,” and possibly for several years ahead, ”he said.