Humanitarian Assistance: In Free Fall?
The reduction in commitments to finance life saving assitance appears to persist in 2026.
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Humanitarian assistance supports people who find themselves in acute distress due to crises, conflicts, or natural disasters and are unable to cope on their own. While crises, wars, and natural disasters have not decreased, the scale of humanitarian assistance has. A decline in funding for this form of aid can be observed worldwide; from 2024 to 2025 alone, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) recorded a drop of nearly 25%. It is quite possible that there will be a further decline by the end of 2026.
Yet the humanitarian community’s goal was to support at least 135 million of the 239 million people in need of humanitarian assistance. The decline is attributable to the fact that several major donors have cut their funding. The United States and Germany, previously the two largest providers of humanitarian assistance, were responsible for 88% of the decline in 2025.
While the German government also cut the corresponding budget for 2026 (and the 2027 budget as well), the current U.S. administration—which is known for not being particularly close to the United Nations— has nevertheless allocated $3.8 billion to UNOCHA, as well as an additional $218 million to UNICEF and $800 million to the World Food Programme (WFP).
Nevertheless, the WFP warned that it did not have enough funds to provide food to the more than 130’000 Congolese refugees in Burundi. And the IOM, the International Organization for Migration, pointed out that in Sudan, for example, a lack of assistance forces many people to leave their homes and, in most cases, seek refuge in another country in the region.
In its report this year, “The World’s Most Neglected Displacement Crises,” the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) highlighted that “underfunding is the new normal” in humanitarian assistance. Ironically, in 2025 – the very year when displacement reached record levels – pledges for humanitarian assistance fell to their lowest point in the last decade.
The report also reaches the sad conclusion that the attention of donor governments is directed “where political and commercial interests align, not to where suffering is greatest.”
Andrew Sherriff of the Maastricht-based think tank ECPDM also concludes in his analysis that the drivers behind the cuts are domestic political factors: political decisions in donor countries, driven by shifting political priorities, financial pressure, and increasingly sceptical electorates, are key reasons. Concerns about public spending, healthcare systems, housing, and the cost of living weigh heavily.
The above mentioned NRC-study ends with the words: „The humanitarian response cannot solve what political and economic interests are not prepared to address. The trajectory of neglect will only worsen without humanitarian diplomacy that matches the scale of what is unfolding, and a genuine committment to inclusive peace processes.“
