World's top aid agencies reveal what people should be most concerned about in 2016

With record numbers of refugees, long-term conflicts around the world and the looming threat of climate change, 2015 has given us plenty to worry about on a global scale.

The new year offers a chance to look forward to what will happen in 2016 – and according to the world’s top aid agencies, the next 12 months will usher in a growing range of humanitarian crises.

In a poll conducted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, 15 leading agencies gave their top three concerns for the coming year. Here’s what they said.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the crisis in Syria was named as the top humanitarian concern for 2016 by more than half the aid agencies surveyed.

Writing in this newspaper, Patrick Cockburn says the rising stakes in Syria and Iraq mean that “in terms of explosive violence on an international scale, 2016 could be our 1914”.

Mike Noyes, ActionAid’s head of humanitarian response, told Thomson Reuters the crisis in Europe “has lead us to largely forget that most of those affected by the crisis are still in Syria or in neighbouring countries”.

Action Against Hunger, Sightsavers and the Norwegian Refugee Council are among the agencies who listed the crisis in CAR as one of the biggest humanitarian threats for 2016.

Draught, starvation, poverty, lack of medicines and general issues of displacement due to the country’s violent conflict mean that more than half its population require urgent assistance.

“Central Africa Republic is a forgotten humanitarian crisis which is not making the front pages,” Action Against Hunger UK’s Juliet Parker said.

Two of the agencies surveyed named the threat to food security from the current unprecedented El Niño effect as their greatest concern for 2016.

Care International said the phenomenon – which leads to prolonged weather extremes on either side of the Pacific ocean – was “shaping up to be higher in magnitude and broader in impact than the devastating El Niño of 1997-98 which led to widespread loss of life”.

A number of agencies grouped together the conflicts in Syria and Yemen as among the worlds’ biggest concerns in 2016.

Rabih Torbay, senior vice president of international operations for the International Medical Corps (IMC), told Thomson Reuters: “Sadly, we expect the already dire humanitarian situation in both Syria and Yemen to only worsen”.

For Save the Children, South Sudan represents the biggest humanitarian threat on its horizon for the next year after only Ethiopia.

The charity raised the issue of the country’s maternal mortality rate, the worst in the world, as well as the 250,000 children in South Sudan suffering from severe malnutrition.

Largely ignored around the world, the political violence in Burundi was among the biggest concerns listed by at least three of the agencies surveyed.

IMC’s Rabih Torbay said there were major fears that “the violence and heightened rhetoric in Burundi could potentially spiral into human tragedy in 2016”.

One of the most remarkable findings of the foundation’s survey was the sheer range of different humanitarian threats the world will face in the coming year.

AmeriCares said the Ebola epidemic had exposed serious weaknesses in healthcare systems across West Africa and “problems in the worldwide emergency health response system”.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was also a threat, while the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan was “far from over”.

Some highlighted the danger to north-eastern Nigeria from Boko Haram, while others warned of the threat to the very existence of the so-called Small Island Developing States in the Pacific from rising sea levels. According to the UN, at least 87 million people are expected to require humanitarian aid in 2016, costing the world’s nations a record $20.1 billion.

See the full results on the Thomson Reuters Foundation website here.