17 November 2009

G20 Humanitarian Priorities

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies asked the governments of the G20 about their top humanitarian priorities (PDF), results shown in the figure above.
As an initial question, the governments were asked: “What does your government consider to be the three greatest ‘humanitarian’ challenges facing the international community?"
The leading priority was "climate change." Poverty and food security did not even make the top 3 on the list. As these are "humanitarian challenges," I wonder how responding to climate change differs from responding to the other issues on the list.