Clearly you can’t use the term ‘killer facts’ when they concern actual deaths, so Oxfam has tweaked the name to Humanitarian Key Facts in a new 
compilation (to be updated on a regular basis). It’s a powerful collection that should provide lots of link-tastic, well referenced ammunition (sorry – language problem again) for advocacy. The most striking one for me was that of the total $3trn in aid over the last 20 years, just $70bn has gone on responding to ‘natural disasters’, and only $13.4bn (0.4%) on preparing for them in advance (Disaster Risk Reduction). I thought it was a much higher proportion. Here’s a sample, co-authored with Laura Searle of the Humanitarian policy team.
CONFLICT AND VIOLENCE
• In the 12 months to June 2015, the world will spend £7bn on peacekeeping (Source: UN). This is less than half of 1 percent of world military expenditure (estimated at $1.75 trillion). (Source: SIPRI)
• The five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the UK, US, France, China and Russia) account for 75 percent of the world’s arms transfers, 59 percent of global military expenditure and less than 4 percent of UN peacekeepers.
• Every year since 2008, the world has become less peaceful. In 2014, the ongoing conflicts in Syria, Ukraine and South Sudan all contributed to this continuing trend. (Source: Institute for Economics and Peace)
• By the end of 2013, 51 million people were forcibly displaced as a result of persecution, conflict, violence or human rights violations. This is the highest number since the Second World War. (Source: UNHCR)
• More than 1.5 billion people already live in countries that are blighted by conflict and face repeated cycles of violence. (Source: World Bank)
• One-third of the world’s poor live in fragile and conflict-ridden countries. By 2018, this share is likely to grow to one-half, and by 2030 it could be as much as two-thirds. (Source: OECD DAC and Brookings Institution)
• There are 21 countries where the lives of women are blighted by rape and other forms of sexual violence which may be used as a weapon of war. In the space of one year (2006–2007) four women were raped every five minutes in the Democratic Republic of Congo; or more than 400,000 women in 12 months. (Source: UN and The Telegraph)
• It is notoriously difficult to count the number of people killed in conflicts, but millions of people have lost their lives in recent years. Since 1998, violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo has led to 5.4 million deaths. (Source: International Rescue Committee)
DISASTERS FROM NATURAL HAZARDS
• In the last 20 years, disasters from natural hazards have killed 1.3 million, affected 4.4 billion people, and caused almost $2tn in economic losses. (Source: Oxfam)
• The number of weather-related disasters reported has tripled in 30 years. (Source: Oxfam)
• An estimated 258,000 people died in Somalia from famine and food insecurity between October 2010 and April 2012. (Source: FAO)
• By the 2030s, large parts of Southern Africa and South and East Asia will be more exposed to droughts, floods and other hazards; 325 million people in extreme poverty will live in the most exposed areas. (Source: ODI)
• Small, local disasters often go unnoticed by donors and media alike. But they account for a large proportion of disasters’ global impact: 54 percent of houses damaged, and 83 percent of people injured. (Source: Oxfam)
• Disasters from natural hazards hit poor countries far harder than richer ones: 81 percent of disaster deaths are in low-income and lower-middle income countries, even though they account for only 33 percent of disasters; in 2010, the earthquake that struck Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas , killed 200 times as many people as an earthquake in Chile weeks later; Chile’s earthquake was 500 times stronger;
• Vulnerability to disasters is enormously unequal: Less than 10 percent of workers in least developed countries are covered by social security; in most industrial nations, it is almost 100 percent; 97 percent of people living on less than $4 per day have no insurance cover, and so are highly vulnerable to major risks or financial shocks.
• Disasters kill more women than men, particularly in major calamities. Women accounted for 70–80 percent of those killed by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and according to UNDP, women and children are 14 times more likely than men to die during a disaster. (Source: LSE and UNDP)
HUMANITARIAN ACTION
• In the last decade, the number of people who need humanitarian aid and the cost of helping them has significantly increased. Funding requirements have more than doubled, to over $10bn per year. (Source: UNOCHA) For 2015, the UN has appealed for more than $16bn. (Source: UNOCHA)
• In the last decade, international funding has consistently failed to meet one third of the humanitarian need outlined in UN appeals. (Source: Development Initiatives) At $4.7bn, 2013 saw the largest shortfall since 2000 between the amount requested and the amount given. (Source: UN OCHA and Oxfam)
• Hardly any crisis gets the funds to fully meet its needs. But the amount given is extraordinarily unequal: for every $1 spent on a person affected by Haiti’s earthquake in 2010, 13 cents was spent on a person in need in South Sudan in 2013, 9 cents in Sudan, 4 cents in the Central African Republic. (Source: Oxfam – see footnotes 1 to 4)
• The world spends nearly three times as much on ice cream as it does on humanitarian aid: $59bn on ice cream against, in 2013, $22bn on humanitarian aid. (Source: Market Research and The Guardian)
• For all the talk of building local partnerships, less than 5 percent of humanitarian aid is spent directly through local groups. After Haiti’s earthquake in 2010, less than 1 percent of the total international aid went through Haitian NGOs or companies, and less than 1 percent of the international humanitarian aid was channelled through the Haitian government. (Source: Lessons from Haiti)
• In 2012, OECD countries spent just 6 percent ($630m) of their humanitarian assistance to fund Disaster Risk Reduction. (Source: Development Initiatives) Since 1991 the international community has spent $69.9bn in response to disasters, and only $13.5bn on risk reduction. (Source: ODI)
• Yet prevention is value for money: every $1 spent on disaster resilience in Kenya has saved $2.90 in reduced humanitarian spend, reduced losses and development gains. (Source: DFID)