Humanitarian aid

Every year, hundreds of millions of people suffer as the result of natural disasters, armed conflicts and other crises. Humanitarian aid saves human lives, relieves human suffering, and maintains human dignity in times of crisis. It is financed from Finland’s development cooperation appropriations.

Finnish aid is allocated to countries that have made a formal request to the UN for assistance, if their humanitarian situation has been subject to a reliable needs assessment and if an UN-coordinated consolidated appeal has been made by aid organisations.

Finland is committed to channelling annually about 10 per cent of its development aid appropriations for humanitarian aid directed to official development assistance (ODA) recipient countries.

The Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs channels its funds for humanitarian aid through three routes: UN bodies, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Finnish aid organisations. 

The humanitarian situation in Somalia is dire. Extreme weather events, drought and conflicts are testing the whole country. About half of the Somali population, 8.3 million people, are in need of humanitarian aid, among them more than 3 million children and young people. The country is facing the worst drought in forty years. Somalia needs long-term solutions, the humanitarian, development and peace nexus, and collaboration among different kinds of actors.

Ongoing conflict and unrest and limited financing for humanitarian aid pose significant challenges to addressing the effects of drought and other crises.

In 2022, Finland granted a total of EUR 15.5 million in humanitarian aid to Somalia. Of this sum, EUR 13 million was allocated from humanitarian aid funds and EUR 2.5 million was channelled to humanitarian action within the Country Programme. Aid was granted through Save the Children Finland, the World Food Programme (WFP), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). In addition, Finland helped the WFP fund the Black Sea Grain Initiative to support food security in the Horn of Africa.