For 2015, the UN says it requires $19.7 billion to respond to the needs of almost 83 million people requiring humanitarian assistance around the world. According to its own financial tracking service, only $8 billion in funding has been collected so far.

For the second year ever, the UN has designated four countries level three or “L3,” a category reserved for the most severe, large-scale humanitarian crises. They are Syria, Iraq, Yemen and South Sudan. In all of these, the funding gap is close to 50 percent.

For 2015, the UN is seeking $8.4 billion in funding to support those affected by war inside Syria and the millions of Syrian refugees who have fled the country. Today, only $4.3 billion has been collected…

“The American public is more generous in response to a natural disaster — for example, an earthquake in Nepal, a cyclone in the Philippines — and they struggle to understand how their contributions will make a difference in a Yemen, in an Iraq, in a Central African Republic, where the suffering seems great and the cause seems ongoing and endless,” says Greg Ramm, vice president for humanitarian response at Save the Children.