MOSCOW, November 5 (RIA Novosti) — The global humanitarian community is no longer able to cope with the rise in numbers of refugees around the world, Antonio Guterres, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, told The Independent newspaper in an interview.
"I think it's fair to say that the humanitarian community has reached its limit," Guterres told The Independent Tuesday, adding that "the world has apparently lost its capacity to prevent conflicts and to try and resolve them".
"The funding available is no longer enough, the capacity to respond is completely overstretched. If you combine these [conflicts] with the impacts of climate change, with the multiplication of natural disasters, population growth, food insecurity, water scarcity – all this is creating a situation where humanitarian needs are growing exponentially and the capacity to respond is not able to match," UN High Commissioner for Refugees stated.
An increase in the number of conflicts worldwide has been the main reason behind the current humanitarian crisis, according to the commissioner, who cited the situations in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, South Sudan and the Central African Republic as examples.
UN official data suggests that in 2011 around 14,000 people were displaced by conflict every day. In 2012 this number increased by 9,000 and reached 32,000 last year. The data for 2014 will be even higher, Guterres said, with the most problematic regions being Syria, Iraq, Libya, South Sudan and Central African Republic.
