Dubai's Burj Khalifa Lights up on the World Humanitarian Day
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ABU DHABI, August 19, 2022 - Marking World Humanitarian Day (WHD), Dubai Burj Khalifa lights up with #ItTakesAVillage, this year’s campaign slogan that was launched by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) earlier this month, with the goal of showing the effectiveness and the positive impact of humanitarian work and celebrating people who come together to ease suffering and bring hope.
Lighting Burj Khalifa with the WHD logo and Campaign’s slogan, for the second consecutive year, demonstrates the solid partnership between the government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). For years, the UAE has provided life-saving humanitarian assistance in major crises around the world, with a significant governmental response represented by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and the Emirates Red Crescent.
The United Arab Emirates has ranked among top donor to OCHA in the last 5 years. In 2022, UAE has allocated a total of US$293.9m funding a number of regional crises in Ethiopia, Yemen, Occupied Palestinian Territories, Ukraine, Somalia, Afghanistan, and others. These fundings enable humanitarian agencies to provide life-saving assistance in the different areas, health, food, protection services, education, and others.
On 19 August 2003, a bomb attack on the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, Iraq, killed 22 humanitarian aid workers, including the UN Special Representative of the SecretaryGeneral for Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello. Five years later, the General Assembly adopted a resolution designating 19 August as World Humanitarian Day (WHD).
Each year, WHD focuses on a theme, bringing together partners from across the humanitarian system, this year’s Campaign #ItTakesAVillage highlights the breadth and depth of humanitarian work, just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a whole community to help people in need. In an emergency, the first people to respond are always crisis-affected people themselves. They are joined by local volunteers, emergency services, local and national authorities, NGOs, UN agencies, and the Red Cross and Red Crescent, among many others.
The aid community is grappling with the toll of the devastating combination of conflicts, the climate emergency, the continued toll of the pandemic and rising poverty causing the number of people who need humanitarian assistance to reach a record 303 million.
As this mega crisis continues, humanitarian workers step up to respond every day by providing food and cash, health and clean water, protection services and much more.
Because as the saying goes, #ItTakesAVillage