Faced with the COVID-19 pandemic, our sister organization ACTED alerts about the risks in the poorest countries, where millions of vulnerable people are already facing humanitarian and health crises. Click here to sign the appeal.

Thanks to the implementation of strict containment measures and with the help of advanced medical infrastructure, Europe, as well as most industrialized countries in the world, will be able to face this terrible pandemic. With much suffering and strife, our society will prevail on the spread of the new strand of the coronavirus.

However, the situation of less privileged, developing countries, sometimes at war, sometimes facing severe humanitarian crises, are almost disarmed in the face of the pandemic.

It is our humanitarian duty to alert public opinion and governments alike on the potential enormous impact that the spread of COVID-19 will have in the poorest, most vulnerable countries, where hundreds of millions of people are already being affected by humanitarian, and health crises.

We solemnly declare: without a massive and immediate surge of solidarity from industrialized countries, millions of women and men could die from the spread of COVID-19 in countries that are fragile, and have little capacity to respond. Our thoughts first go to the most vulnerable among them: the internally displaced and refugees.

As IMPACT Initiatives, and as a member of Alliance2015, a network of eight humanitarian and development NGOs based in Europe, working in 95 countries to serve 40 million affected people, we call for massive and immediate mobilization to help the most vulnerable prepare for this ordeal.

We must reach an immediate convergence between the humanitarian community, the Red Cross and NGOs, state actors, non-state actors, the private sector and civil society to support these populations.

It is our duty to act, starting from today.