The United Nations on Wednesday asked for a record $7 billion to help 30 million people recover from disasters and conflict in the coming year, stressing the global financial crisis did not justify cuts to foreign aid, Reuters reported. The 2009 humanitarian appeal is the largest in the U.N.'s history and coincides with a credit crunch that has strained the budgets of traditional donor governments such as the United States, France and Britain. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said economic stormclouds did not let the international community off the hook for dealing with emergencies in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, and other stricken states. "The global financial crisis has raised inevitable concerns that there could be a decline in humanitarian funding for 2009. I urge member states and private donors not to let that happen," he wrote in a foreword to the fundraising document. "I appeal for $7 billion to be provided without delay and as a top priority," Ban said. Humanitarian aid has fallen far short of U.N. requests in the past decade, even in periods of strong economic growth.
