The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) released its full final data on official development assistance (ODA) last week, allowing us to update our analysis of humanitarian aid expenditure by donor and recipient country for 2008.
The headlines are:
- total humanitarian assistance from DAC donors (22 countries plus the European Commission) reached US$11.2 billion in 2008 - this is US$2.5 billion (nearly 29%) higher than in 2007 (US$8.7 billion)
- US$11.2bn is 9.3% of total ODA in 2008 (excluding debt relief). This compares to 8.2% in 2007
- the United States remains the biggest single donor of humanitarian aid, accounting for 38% (US$4.3 billion) of the US11.2 billion; the next biggest donors are the European Commission (US$1.9 billion) and the United Kingdom (US$1.1 billion)
- Sudan was the largest recipient (US$1.3 billion), followed by Afghanistan (US$823 million), Ethiopia (US$807 million); Palestine (US$750 million); and Somalia (US$540 million) – these amounts include contributions made through the CERF and country-level pooled funds.
Over half (US$1.3 billion) of the US$2.5 billion rise in humanitarian expenditure in 2008 came from the United States. The next biggest increases in volume came from the European Commission (US$277 million) and the UK (US$338 million). Other notable increases came from Spain (US$204 million) and Australia (US$131 million).
Ethiopia received the biggest increase in humanitarian aid – up by over US$500 million to US$807 million in 2008. US$343m of this was funded by the United States.
You can click through to our Motion Charts area to see what donor expenditure has looked like since 1990.
The Creditor Reporting System (CRS), which provides more detailed data on aid by activity, will be updated in the coming days.
Korea's official membership of the DAC begins in January 2010. Our figures don’t yet include the country's ODA or humanitarian contributions.
