Ban appoints a high-level panel on Humanitarian financing

NEW YORK, May 22 (KUNA) - The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appointed a high-level panel on humanitarian financing to face the growing challenges between the increasing numbers of people in need for assistance and sufficient resources to provide relief.
The humanitarian panel came as a result of a number of factors including protracted conflicts which are forcing record numbers of people from their homes, water scarcity, food insecurity, demographic shifts, rapid urbanization and climate change.
Ban's deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq said on Thursday that the panel, co-chaired by Bulgarian Kristalina Georgieva and Malaysian Sultan Nazrin Shah, to work on generating solutions around the issues of more timely and predictable funding, as well as ways in which resources can be used more effectively.
Moreover, the panel will examine humanitarian financing challenges and will identify ways in which the gap between rising needs and the resources available to meet them can be closed.
This initiative also brings together distinguished individuals with a wide range of experience and expertise including Hadeel Ibrahim of UK, Bader Jafar of UAE, Trevor Manuel of South Africa, Linah Mohohlo of Botswana, Walt Macnee of Canada, Margot Wallstrom of Sweden and Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah of Sri Lanka.
The number of people in need has more than doubled since 2004 to over 100 million today, and current humanitarian funding requirements for 2015 stand at USD 19.1 billion, up from USD 3.4 billion in 2004, Haq added. (end) mao.rk