GNV News — September 7, 2025

On August 29, 2025, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced a plan to cut its 2026 budget by about 20%, from US$10.2 billion in 2025 to about US$8.5 billion. Behind this is the current situation in which rising military expenditures among major Western donors are accelerating deep cuts to overseas aid. As a result, UNHCR is set to eliminate about 4,000 jobs and close offices in Southern Africa that have received refugees fleeing the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mozambique, while being forced to scale back assistance across all sectors, including health care, education, and food aid.

A report released by the agency in July 2025 projects that the number of forcibly displaced and stateless people will reach 136 million in 2026, the highest on record. At the same time, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), as of the end of August 2025, only 14% of the funding required for humanitarian response worldwide in 2025 had actually been raised. This represents a sharp decline to about 40% of the level at the same time in 2024, and an additional 11.6 million people could be left without assistance. In fact, analysis shows that programs totaling US$1.4 billion planned for 2025 have been reduced or put on hold, and there are concerns that millions face deteriorating living conditions and heightened risks of exploitation and abuse, potentially forcing further displacement. These funding constraints are not limited to UNHCR; many UN agencies, including the World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), are facing them and are being compelled to implement office closures and suspend aid in rapid succession.

Learn more about global humanitarian aid → “Deaths in conflict and the realities of humanitarian assistance”

Learn more about the UN’s financial difficulties → “United Nations: A crisis driven by funding shortfalls” “United Nations: Funding cuts force a ‘triage for survival’”

UNHCR in Geneva, Switzerland (Photo: Michael Renner / Flickr [CC BY-NC-SA 2.0])