Ukraine Humanitarian Aid Falling While Needs Rise: UN

Umer Jamshaid Published May 21, 2024 | 02:10 AM

Geneva, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 21st May, 2024) Humanitarian aid to Ukraine is falling back even as the country's needs rise more than two years after it was invaded by neighbouring Russia, the UN refugee agency UNHCR warned Monday.

Karolina Lindholm Billing, the UN agency's representative in Ukraine, warned the situation was degenerating, with some four million people already displaced including "some very, very vulnerable people".

There are "much less resources for humanitarian assistance, because the humanitarian needs with these developments are actually growing," Lindholm Billing said.

"It is the most vulnerable (that) will bear the brunt of that reduced funding and support."

In an interview with AFP in Geneva, she said that international attention on Ukraine had decreased over time.

The UN's 2024 humanitarian plan for Ukraine amounts to $3.1 billion this year, including $599 million for the UNHCR.

But both the global response plan and the UNHCR appeal were only around 15 percent funded in the first quarter of the year -- while the same funding reached around 30 percent during the same period last year, said Lindholm Billing.

As the conflict drags on to become what she termed an "ultra marathon," she added that "the cash assistance, the humanitarian in kind aid, the help with accommodation, house repairs, the psychosocial support" is now "less frequent and less predictable".

She highlighted the fallout from the ongoing Russian offensive around the eastern Kharkiv region, with countless civilians often left without basics such as electricity and water supplies.

Russian troops since May 10 have carried out a ground assault in the northeastern region, where they have achieved their largest territorial gains in the last 18 months.

Lindholm Billing said, as of Sunday, some 10,300 people had been evacuated in border areas "and evacuations still continue".

And she noted that "those who still live in these frontline settlements are usually elderly".