Informing humanitarians worldwide 24/7 — a service provided by UN OCHA

Bumper six months for ReliefWeb postings

We don’t usually report back on ReliefWeb’s six-month performance indicators, but then again, these are not normal times. Thanks to the flood of information surrounding COVID-19 and the number of sources producing reports, analyses, infographics, manuals and guidelines, we have been inundated over the first six months of the year, with June proving to be the busiest time in terms of volume, even though some parts of the world had already emerged from lockdown by then.

Such was the extent of the change between the first six months of this year and 2019 that the number of users jumped by 48 percent to more than 7.5 million! Mobile-phone usage also increased - by 3 percent to 48 percent of the total (including tablets and desk top), while the number of page views was little changed at almost 42 million.

The top five user countries were the United States with almost 1.2 million readers, followed by the Philippines, UK, India and Kenya. El Salvador featured for the first time, coming in tenth place after Canada, Nigeria, Pakistan and Australia.

The amount of content submitted to the ReliefWeb editorial teams more than tripled between February and July, dipping only once, in May. We don’t anticipate any slowdown in the near future either, as the number of disasters - aside from the pandemic - continues to rise. With floods across most of Southeast Asia and larges swathes of Africa, locust swarms on the rampage in Africa and as far east as South Asia, a recurrence of polio in Sudan and hurricane season warming up (to name but a few), we will be kept busy one way or another.

As always, we value your feedback so please do get in touch.