Who Pays for Global Humanitarian Aid?

Only a few hours passed. Shortly after the severe earthquake in Afghanistan in early September 2025, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) provided $10 million. Additional funds were to follow from UN member states and donors. The UN “fire brigade” for humanitarian aid and disaster relief had made a start to the provision of emergency aid. But even beyond the spotlight focussed on Afghanistan, the UN apparatus is buzzing – providing aid to refugees from Sudan, flood victims in Pakistan, and the starving in Somalia.

These days, the international community relies on OCHA to coordinate humanitarian aid operations after natural and man-made disasters where the capacities of national authorities are insufficient. This is because the UN Charter aims “to achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.”

87 percent of global humanitarian interventions are funded on a voluntary basis by UN member states. Here, too, the saying applies that “he who pays the piper calls the tune” and determines where, for what, and by which organization funds are to be used. However, a look at the contributions that OCHA records and aggregates for the entire system reveals a highly uneven picture of who carries the major financial load.

According to OCHA, humanitarian aid totalled $36.5 billion in 2024. According to statistics from the Chief Executives Board for Coordination, humanitarian aid accounted for 44 percent of the UN system's total expenditure in 2023; it is the largest area of expenditure, followed by the two other main tasks of sustainable development (30 percent) and peace operations (12 percent). In the ten years prior to this, the needs of civilian populations in distress rose continuously – largely due to conflicts that the UN was unable to prevent or end in the face of geopolitical blockades by the major powers in the Security Council. As a result, financing humanitarian aid has become the greatest challenge for the United Nations.

Which UN institutions provide humanitarian aid?

The key component of the system and an important hub is OCHA. It is based at the UN Secretariat and is responsible for the cross-system coordination of emergency relief measures. OCHA can activate immediate and life-saving emergency relief operations around the world through the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF). This fund receives voluntary contributions throughout the year.

The main roles in providing emergency aid or humanitarian measures are played by the World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which is responsible for operational measures to prevent, prepare for, and mitigate the consequences of natural disasters.

Volunteers in action

The UN's humanitarian measures are heavily dependent on funding from the wealthiest member states. Looking at the UN's regular budget, which is funded by mandatory contributions, economically strong emerging countries such as China, Brazil, and Russia do figure among the eleven top financiers, which account for more than 70 percent of this budget. However, so-called “assessed contributions” of member states for running costs such as personnel, headquarters, and “political missions” account for only about one-fifth of all revenues.

The extent to which specialized agencies such as WFP or UNHCR are financed from the regular budget is decided by the UN General Assembly. Many of the UN humanitarian and development agencies receive very little or no mandatory contributions. The lion's share of their funding comes from voluntary government contributions, which are divided into two types: core contributions, which the respective UN organizations can use flexibly, and earmarked funds, which are subject to conditions set by the donors, such as for specific emergencies or for programs in selected countries.

Heavy dependence on a few donor countries

In recent years, the United States clearly dominated government funding for international humanitarian aid, followed by Germany and the United Kingdom. OCHA's Financial Tracking System (FTS) records that the entire system relies on just ten leading contributors for well over half of its income.

This concentration characterizes the UN Development System (UNDS) and, within it, the area of development expenditure (operational activities for development - OAD), which includes humanitarian services: 65 percent of its funds come from members of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) – i.e., from traditional donor countries of the West. When limited to humanitarian activities, funding is limited even more to a few countries. In 2024, the top five donors—the US, Germany, the EU, the UK, and Sweden—provided 63.5 percent of all UN-coordinated humanitarian aid.

Governments outside the OECD club of industrialized countries, such as the G77 group of countries in the Global South, have a generally sceptical or passive stance toward UN humanitarian structures dominated by OECD governments. Among these countries, those that report ODA contributions for development and humanitarian aid to the DAC are led by China – albeit with negligible interest. While Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) rank sixth and eighth in the OCHA Tracking System in 2024 (Qatar ranks 17th), the contributions to humanitarian aid by prominent emerging economies such as the BRICS+ club (eight countries) are only to be found at the bottom of the rankings. Without Saudi Arabia, they collectively contribute $47.3 million in 2024, slightly more than Austria.

Another source of humanitarian aid are inter-agency pooled funds. These pools for voluntary contributions are set up on the one hand for crises such as dwindling biodiversity, and on the other for individual crisis hotspots, but can be managed more flexibly than allocations to individual UN organizations. In addition to the CERF emergency fund, these include, for example, the Afghanistan Humanitarian Fund, pools for Ukrainian communities, and funds for the prevention of tropical storm damage in countries at risk. On average, 60 percent of these funds (2010-2022) go toward humanitarian measures. In 2024, pooled funds from government and non-government contributions totalled $1.66 billion.

In recent years, these pooled funds have also been a response to the weaknesses of the UN system, which include underfunding of individual crises or sectors, frequently slow financing processes, and heavy dependence on a few donor countries. The question of what a reform of the overall humanitarian aid system might look like is once again being intensively discussed this year—under pressure from the withdrawal of Donald Trump's administration (under the heading “Humanitarian Reset”). Earlier proposals by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that all UN member states should make increased mandatory contributions to this area of responsibility continue to be met with little enthusiasm.

Every year, the foreseeable international need for life-saving actions is determined in advance, globally, regionally, and locally. This assessment by the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator and OCHA chief in Geneva in December lays the basis for voluntary contributions – and foreseeable funding gaps. For Afghanistan, for example, this requirement for 2024 (3.1 billion dollars) remained underfunded by 47 percent. In 2025, as of September, the shortfall was as high as 72 percent.