Burundi Celebrates World Humanitarian Day

Humanitarian workers step up to respond every day by providing lifesaving assistance such as food and cash, health and clean water, protection services and emergency education to millions of women, children and men.

Every year on 19 August, the humanitarian community comes together to celebrate World Humanitarian Day. Thirteen years after its first celebration, the aid community worldwide is grappling with the toll of a megacrisis. The devastating combination of conflicts, the climate emergency, geopolitics, the pandemic, poverty and a war has caused the number of people who need humanitarian assistance to reach a record 303 million.

As this megacrisis continues, humanitarian workers step up to respond every day by providing lifesaving assistance such as food and cash, health and clean water, protection services and emergency education to millions of women, children and men. Because as the saying goes, #ItTakesAVillage. Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a whole community to help people in need. As individuals, our impact is limited, but together we have tremendous power. In Burundi, the humanitarian community, alongside the Government, continues to provide for multi-sectoral assistance to 947,000 most vulnerable people out of the 1.8 million in need. However, despite the country progressively transitioning towards development, challenges remain. Burundi is among the 20 most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change, generating displacements, epidemics and affecting food security.

On this day celebrating the lifesaving actions of tireless aid workers, we also thank donors, continuously supporting humanitarian actors to carry on essential operations globally and here in Burundi. To date, the US$182 million Humanitarian Response Plan 2022 for Burundi is funded only at 13.5%. We continue to call on all donors to push their efforts further to allow humanitarians to reach all the people targeted by aid in Burundi.

From 19 to 26 August, an exhibition at the United Nations Information Centre in Bujumbura displays profiles of humanitarian workers. The exhibition is open to the public and provides an insight on the different professionals and community members needed to deliver to the most vulnerable people. It comes to show that it takes a village to provide assistance.

To mark the day, UN Secretary-General António Guterres declared that “Far from the spotlight and out of the headlines, humanitarians work around the clock to make our world a better place. Against incredible odds, often at great personal risk, they ease suffering in some of the most dangerous circumstances imaginable. On this year’s World Humanitarian Day, we celebrate humanitarians everywhere. We salute their dedication and courage, and pay tribute to those who lost their lives in pursuit of this noble cause. They represent the best of humanity.”

UN Resident Coordinator a.i Richmond Tiemoko affirmed that “World Humanitarian Day is an opportunity to highlight the effectiveness and the positive impact of humanitarian work, and to celebrate people who come together to ease suffering and bring hope.”

Cassien Tribunal Aungane, Editor