This archive report was first published on 17 July 2020.
On July 17, 2020, the United Nations made a historic appeal for $10.3 billion (£8.2 billion) to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, its largest-ever fundraising call.
The UN warned that failure to act could undo decades of development, with up to 265 million people facing starvation by the end of the year due to the pandemic's impact.
The funds will be used to support low-income and fragile countries, which are struggling to cope with the economic and social consequences of the pandemic.
Initially, the UN asked for $2 billion in its first coronavirus appeal in March, but the revised appeal is a record, and the UN is urging wealthy countries to throw away the financial rule book to protect their own economies and now do the same for poorer nations.
Millions of migrant workers laid off under lockdown cannot send money home, vaccination programmes for childhood diseases are on hold, and countries already enduring years of conflict are ill-equipped to handle COVID-19.
For example, in Yemen, a quarter of all those confirmed to have had the virus have died from it, five times the global average.
Meanwhile, the UK's Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) has launched an appeal to help the world's most vulnerable through the pandemic, with 14 charities, including Oxfam, Christian Aid, Islamic Relief, and the British Red Cross, joining together to ask the British public to donate.
As of July 2020, there have been more than 13 million confirmed COVID-19 cases globally, and nearly 600,000 people have died.
