The "Humanitarian Reset" – UN Reform out of Necessity

This summer of 2025, the international humanitarian system is facing fundamental reforms, probably the most significant of the last two decades. Tom Fletcher, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, responded with the so-called Humanitarian Reset to what he sees as a profound crisis of the humanitarian system in terms of legitimacy, funding, and morale. The process has the potential to significantly transform global humanitarian aid.

It is unclear how this will interact with an even larger reform process that is scrutinizing the entire UN system. This process, called “UN80” in view of this year's 80th anniversary of the foundation of the United Nations, could lead to even more drastic changes, including for the humanitarian system and the Humanitarian Reset.

Previous reform attempts

The international humanitarian system consists primarily of the humanitarian organizations of the United Nations (Organisation for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), World Food Programme, United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), Refugee Agency, World Health Organization, Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, UN Women, Development Programme, and Food and Agriculture Organization), the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, and international non-governmental organizations (INGOs),  which support state authorities and civil society organizations (local and national actors - LNAs) when needed. A large part of the funds for the system are provided by so-called donor countries.

The main actors in the humanitarian system have long agreed on the need for reform. The most prominent evidence of this is the Grand Bargain that emerged from the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016. Reform approaches and processes over the past two decades have focused primarily on the roles played by and the power relations between the various groups of actors. Donor countries decide what funds they allocate to which crises and who should use them. This favors the UN and other international actors (such as INGOs), which can handle larger volumes and often have well established relationships of trust with donors. In addition, humanitarian aid is at times provided not (only) according to the extent of need, but also in accordance with foreign policy priorities.

On the other hand, local and national actors, who usually provide humanitarian aid earlier than international actors, are familiar with local conditions and languages, and are very well connected within the affected communities, are systematically marginalized. This is reflected in significantly lower funding and influence on decision-making. In addition to “localization,” some of the core concerns of the reform debates are the participation of affected communities, more flexible and multi-year funding, a more efficient system design, greater accountability to affected people and communities, and operational priorities such as a focus on cash and voucher assistance.

Despite agreement in principle that LNA should receive more funding and have a greater say, reform processes to date have not brought about any significant changes. Even nine years after the World Humanitarian Summit, the proportion of funds going to LNA as directly as possible (i.e., with no more than one intermediary organization) remains below the 25 percent envisaged in the Grand Bargain. Reform efforts until now have generally depended on the goodwill of the more powerful actors in the system, i.e., donors, UN organizations and, to a lesser extent, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and INGOs.

For donors, there are practical advantages to awarding fewer contracts with larger sums to UN organizations and INGOs than many smaller contracts to LNAs – which are more time-consuming and perceived as higher risk. As has been analyzed many times, the humanitarian system offers no economic incentives for localization, and UN organizations and INGOs compete for funds.

A changed framework

With the Humanitarian Reset, the system could well become a different one. This assumption is not based on the idea that all actors now want to allow changes, even if these weaken their positions. Rather, the international humanitarian system will be under such severe pressure in 2025 that changes – of whatever kind – will become inevitable. They are already taking place in the form of dismissals, program closures, and the dissolution of organizations.

This pressure results primarily from drastic cuts in funding for the humanitarian system, mainly by the US, but also by Germany, the UK, and others. President Trump's closure of USAID, the US Agency for International Development, in the spring of 2025, and the associated cut of more than 80 percent of funding for humanitarian aid and development cooperation, sent shock waves through the system. US funding accounted for 40 percent of the global humanitarian budget in 2024.

Mainly because of this slump, Tom Fletcher – as the most important UN representative for humanitarian affairs – declared a profound crisis for the humanitarian community. In addition, he links this to a crisis of legitimacy, evidenced by the fact that humanitarian principles and values are under attack and being disregarded in many places, as well as acrisis of morale, since the already chronically underfunded humanitarian system is nowhere near able to meet the growing global need for aid.

This is the context for Tom Fletcher's letter of March 2025 to the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), in which he formulated the Humanitarian Reset and thus set the reform process in motion.

A reform process from within

The IASC is the highest humanitarian coordination forum of the United Nations. The majority of its members are heads of humanitarian UN organizations – the Principals. The leadership of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and three NGO consortia, one of which includes local and national actors, are also represented. The forum is chaired by the UN Under-Secretary-General himself. In his letter, Fletcher lists some preliminary decisions and work assignments for various committees and proposes an update of the processes for June.

In this first phase, ten workstreams emerged, including an even more radical prioritization of humanitarian action in the face of reduced funding to save lives most urgently at risk. The framework of thematic “clusters,” such as the “Food Security Cluster,” which serves coordination globally and in individual crisis contexts, is to be simplified. Another workstream deals with the transition of UN-led humanitarian coordination structures in some countries to national (or other) structures.

It also became clear that the IASC Humanitarian Coordination Forum itself and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, headed by Fletcher, would take charge of the workstreams. Only one of these will be co-led by a civil society actor, representing the International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA), an NGO consortium of international, national, and local humanitarian organizations.

After the biannual meeting of IASC Principals in June, the UN Under-Secretary-General reported on initial results and outlined the IASC's priorities for the second phase – and for the humanitarian system of the future.

Many familiar key points

Encompassing a much larger scale, the process aims at structural changes throughout the UN system and addresses other areas as well. For example, a review of the mandates of UN organizations is taking place, which could potentially lead to mandates being adjusted or UN organizations being merged or even dissolved. In areas of related responsibility, such as with the three Rome-based organizations World Food Programme (WFP), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), mergers would be conceivable in principle. The same applies to all the humanitarian UN organizations.

However, the task force can only recommend such restructuring. Decisions would have to be taken by the UN General Assembly. Nevertheless, the potential for reform is greater than in the case of the Humanitarian Reset, and decisions made there could in fact be rendered obsolete by UN80. One of the seven clusters deals explicitly with humanitarian aid, but is also led by Under-Secretary-General Fletcher and OCHA, as well as by other humanitarian UN organizations mentioned above.

Criticism of the Humanitarian Reset

Representatives of civil society are taking a critical view of the Humanitarian Reset. In principle, international, national, and local humanitarian NGOs welcome reform. Long before the recent cuts, they had been calling for changes to create a more equitable system that would also be more effective and efficient. However, there are doubts as to whether the Reset, as it currently stands, can achieve this.

The criticism of humanitarian NGOs is directed on the one hand at the process itself. They argue that decisions are being driven less by conviction and a desire for reform than by financial necessity. Decisions are said to be taken in a manner that is neither inclusive nor transparent. In the IASC, which meets in Geneva and New York, NGOs are only indirectly represented by three consortia. In their view, a reform process with LNAs in leading roles would have a better chance of bringing about sustainable changes. It could be conducted via the existing Grand Bargain platform, in which significantly more INGOs and LNAs as well as donors are represented, and where decisions could be taken collectively.

In terms of content, some of the IASC's priorities and decisions are being questioned, such as the hyper-prioritization of humanitarian needs.  The re-prioritization gives the impression that humanitarian actors have not had to make do with insufficient resources for years, as the Global Humanitarian Overview also shows.

Civil society also views the focus on CBPFs critically. In the midst of the global humanitarian funding crisis, it is said, the UN Under-Secretary-General is relying on an instrument managed by his own OCHA. While many organizations are having to accept cuts, close programs, and lay off staff, OCHA would be further strengthened. Others fear that UN-led pooled funds could be more difficult for LNAs to access. In addition, a system that relies heavily on one instrument is more prone to disruption.

Donor countries call for bold steps

Some of the largest donors, including Germany and the EU, outlined their priorities for the Humanitarian Reset in a letter to the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs in June. The donors, who together provide 60 percent of humanitarian funding in the UN system in 2025, welcome the impetus for reform and call for bold steps and concrete tasks in some areas – accompanied by their own proposals and offers.

For the most part, however, the concerns of the largest donors seem in line with the priorities set by the IASC. One of their focus areas is increased localization through pooled funds, including CBPFs, through which significantly more funds could be channeled.