From the article:
It's quite clear that 2018 was a tough year for the world's humanitarian agencies. They tried to provide help to the victims of ongoing conflicts in Syria, Yemen and Somalia, to name a few hot spots. And then there were the major disasters like the floods in India and the tsunami and earthquakes in Indonesia.
This year, the challenges will continue in full force, according to an annual report from UNOCHA, the U.N. humanitarian agency, called World Humanitarian Data and Trends 2018.
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Jeremy Konyndyk, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development and former director of disaster assistance for USAID, says these longer-lasting crises are being driven by conflicts that "just are not being resolved."
Today's dominant conflicts, like those in Yemen, South Sudan and Syria, have been ongoing for years and are still far from a conclusive political solution, he says. As these conflicts drag on, the ability of local people to cope wears thin, making them even more vulnerable to additional shocks. In the meantime, Konyndyk says humanitarians are a "band-aid brigade – sometimes on an indefinite basis."
