Almost two thirds of worldwide development aid for refugees and their host countries are financed by the United States of America, Germany and EU institutions, the OECD has said. The organization recommended a broader donor base.
The dependency on few potent donor countries shows how susceptible the Global Compact on Refugees is in case a political change occurs amongst them, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which published the report on Tuesday (November 9).
The 37-page paper, titled 'Financing for refugee situations,' takes a look at the "strengths and challenges of donor practises when it comes to official development assistance (ODA) for refugees and hosting communities."
In 2018 and 2019 -- the period the report examined --, the US, Germany and EU institutions provided a combined 63% of all development aid to host countries with refugee populations, with $7.22 billion, $4.42 billion and $3.57 billion respectively.
Broadening financing base
The remaining EU member states were contributing an additional 14% of all funding. In thee report, the OECD recommends a broader and more diverse "financing base" and new financing models in order to minimize "the risks of an insufficiently shared responsibility".
Outside of North America and Europe, the biggest donor is Japan with 5.2% of the total, according to the report. The fact that Kuwait, a country of only 4.4 million, contributed 1.1% ($274 million) of the global refugee aid in said period, showed that the foundation of development aid was broader than the group of traditional donors, the authors of the study wrote.
The report also points out that the vast majority (86.6%) of the over 80 million refugees as defined by UNHCR are hosted by least developed, low- and middle-income countries. Moreover, close to half (43%) of all "country-allocable financing for refugee situations" went to fragile countries.
With KNA