SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The world is on fire, in the assessment of the International Rescue Committee in their annual watch list of areas around the globe that are in crisis. The IRC says that more than 300 million people need humanitarian assistance. David Miliband is president and CEO of the IRC. Of course, also the former British foreign secretary. And he joins us from New York. Mr. Miliband, thanks so much for being with us.
DAVID MILIBAND: Yeah, good to be with you again, Scott.
SIMON: Let's begin with the countries that your assessment says face the greatest needs. And you begin with Sudan.
MILIBAND: Yes. The watch list of the 20 countries at greatest risk of humanitarian catastrophe in the year ahead is topped by Sudan. It's a country that has 30 million people in humanitarian need. That means they depend on international aid organizations like the International Rescue Committee to survive. As you've covered on your show, there's a civil war in Sudan. It started about 21 months ago. It pits not just domestic fighters against each other - different factions of the previous governing coalition - but they're backed by regional powers. So the arms supply is huge.
And the refugee flows into very poor countries next door - South Sudan and Chad - is growing by the day. There's now 1 1/2 to 2 million refugees in the neighboring states. It's a war at the moment without any clear end. And it's a symbol of how the world is out of balance because hard power, military might, is overrunning diplomacy. It's exacerbated by the climate crisis. And civilians, rather than soldiers, are bearing the brunt of the fighting.
SIMON: What other areas would you like us to pay attention to this year?
MILIBAND: Well, the top five of our watch list is, first of all, Sudan, then Gaza and the West Bank together, then Myanmar, then Syria and then South Sudan. And so let me just say a word about the Syrian case because it's interesting. For the last four or five years, people have said to us, why is Syria still on your list?
We never took Syria off the list, but we never believed that the war was over. Commentators said President Assad has won, the conflict is finished. We said, no, 16 million people were still in humanitarian need, and the events in Syria have shown just how brittle was the situation and have proven that unmet humanitarian need is eventually a source of political instability.
And, of course, you've got refugees from Lebanon and Jordan or even from Germany thinking about going home and, in some cases, going home. So you've got tumult in Syria with all of the questions that arise when a state collapses, and when armed opposition groups take over, and when words about respecting the diversity of Syria need to be turned into action.
SIMON: One of the many statistics in this report that just stop a reader - 77.9 million people needed humanitarian assistance in 2015. That number has grown to over 300 million today. What are some of the reasons for that staggering increase?
MILIBAND: The staggering figures that you reflect on are really important to understand. The biggest driver has been conflict. It's a striking fact that in the world today if you're born in a stable state, a stable country, your chances of being in poverty are falling. But in fragile and conflict states, they've been rising. Since the early 2000s, there's been an over 80% increase in extreme poverty in conflict-ridden states. That conflict is exacerbated by the climate crisis.
In the Central Sahel region of Africa, the average rise in temperature has been over 50% greater than the global average rise in temperature. And we're seeing more and more extreme weather events. If you're living in one of these countries, you're more likely to be a victim of an extreme weather event than if you're elsewhere, and you've got less resilience, less investment in adaptation to help you get through it.
SIMON: David, I know you travel. Is there a scene? Is there a person or group of people that particularly stay with you?
MILIBAND: The most recent visit I did was to southern Mexico. I was meeting people who were coming across the border from Guatemala to Mexico. They came mainly from Latin America, and I just can't get out of my mind a Venezuelan woman. She was called Paola (ph). She was a political dissident in Venezuela eight years ago. And she said to me, for seven years, I'd forgotten and lost sight of the fact that migrants are allowed to have dreams, too. Refugees can have dreams. And she's now participating in a livelihood program that we ran, and she's now got a part time job.
That sticks in my mind, and I think it's important to offer that because it would be obvious for me to say, yes, I've got the image of a starving child. But we've got to focus not just on the suffering, which is intense, but it's doubly frustrating, it's doubly wrong. Because in many cases, we know what needs to be done about it, and that's the challenge that we're laying down in this report. It's not just a planning report for the International Rescue Committee. It's a call to action for the wider world.
SIMON: David Miliband from the International Rescue Committee. Thanks so much for being with us.
MILIBAND: Thanks so much, Scott.
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