Key Points
- UN aid agency highlights deadly confluence of factors pummeling millions of refugees
- The agency requires $10.6 billion to assist refugees this year
GENEVA: The United Nations warned on Friday that severe cuts to humanitarian budgets could leave over 11 million refugees without urgently needed assistance.
The UN Refugee Agency in a report on Friday said the figure represents about one-third of those reached by the organisation last year.
The report highlighted a deadly confluence of factors pummeling millions of refugees and displaced people: rising displacement, shrinking funding, and political apathy. And women and children are, as ever, the hardest hit.
Altogether, $1.4 billion of essential programmes are being cut or put on hold, according to the analysis of UNHCR programmes and funds received this year. Millions now face deteriorating living conditions, heightened risks of exploitation and abuse, and may be pushed into further displacement.
“We are right now facing a deadly cocktail,” UNHCR’s head of external relations, Dominique Hyde, told reporters in Geneva. “We are incredibly concerned for refugees and displaced populations around the world.”
UNHCR in the report said it requires $10.6 billion to assist the world’s refugees this year, but so far it has received just 23 percent of that amount.
The agency said families were being forced to choose between feeding their children, buying medicines, and paying rent.
Malnutrition is especially severe for refugees fleeing war-ravaged Sudan, where the UN has been forced to reduce food rations and nutrition screening, she said, decrying the “devastating impact for children who have fled to Chad.”
These aren’t just budget cuts.
They’re lifelines being pulled from millions of people forced to flee.
This is the real impact of funding cuts.
Learn more: https://t.co/1ZdMQlvgjA
— UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency (@Refugees) July 18, 2025
It said that in Uganda, malnutrition rates are soaring in some reception centres, with limited access to clean water and food.
According to the report, health and education services are being scaled back worldwide, with schools closing and clinics understaffed. In camps hosting Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, education for some 230,000 children is at risk of being suspended. UNHCR’s entire health programme in Lebanon is at risk of being shuttered by the end of the year.
“Financial aid and the delivery of emergency relief items have been cut by 60 per cent globally, and shelter programmes have been critically diminished. In places like Niger, cuts in financial aid for shelter have left families in overcrowded structures or at risk of homelessness,” said the report.
Financial aid in Ukraine and across the region has also been slashed, leaving uprooted families unable to afford rent, food, or medical treatment.
Brutal year for the millions who depend on us & partners. We’ve massively cut costs to protect services for those who need them most.
But we can’t offset funding cuts this deep.
11.6M people may lose support in 2025.
Please help us save lives.https://t.co/U8LYi0gvAw
— Kelly T. Clements (@KellyTClements) July 18, 2025
It noted registration, child protection, legal counselling, as well as prevention of and responses to gender-based violence, have been hard hit.
“In South Sudan, 75 per cent of safe spaces for women and girls supported by UNHCR have closed, leaving up to 80,000 refugee women and girls, including survivors of sexual violence, without access to medical care, psychosocial support, legal aid, material support, or income-generating activities,” it said.
Cuts are also, worryingly, impacting resettlement and the safe and voluntary return of refugees. Around 1.9 million Afghans have returned home or been forced back since the start of the year, but financial aid for returnees is barely enough to afford food, let alone rent, undermining efforts to ensure stable reintegration.
Last month, UNHCR announced it would need to cut 3,500 staff – nearly a third of its workforce worldwide – amid the budget shortfall.
