Grim And Hopeful Global Trends To Watch In 2020 (And Fold Into A Zine)

We don't have a crystal ball, but as journalists covering global health and development, we have a pretty good nose for emerging trends (with some help from our favorite expert sources).

Some likely trends give cause for optimism — signs of progress in solving the world's problems. Other trends are pessimistic — threats and challenges that are expected to worsen in the year ahead.

Here are 11 trend lines we'll be watching in 2020. First we'll give you the bad news — then the hopeful predictions.

Grim trends

A record number of people will need humanitarian assistance

The United Nations is predicting that 168 million people, a record, will need humanitarian assistance in 2020 due to extreme weather, large infectious disease outbreaks and intensifying, protracted conflicts across more than 50 countries. That's around a million more people than were in need of assistance in 2019, and the number is expected to continue to rise, up to 200 million people by 2022. The U.N. expects that providing this assistance in 2020 could cost up to $29 billion.

Hot spots include Burkina Faso, where a surge in violence by religious extremists has displaced more than half a million people; the Philippines, where a Christmas Eve typhoon killed more than two dozen; and Venezuela, where an ongoing economic collapse has resulted in the exodus of nearly five million people in the last five years.

Shannon Scribner, associate director for humanitarian policy and programs at Oxfam America, says that funding to respond to these crises "is not keeping pace with the need, and that will continue to be a challenge."

Scribner says another concern is an increasing number of restrictions on international NGOs that make it harder to enter and operate in conflict-affected areas like Syria and Yemen.

"Humanitarian law isn't being upheld in some of the countries where we're working," says Scribner. "And we don't