UN drastically scales back aid plans after ‘deepest funding cuts ever'
The United Nations is sharply scaling back humanitarian plans and will trim its spending plea to donors by more than a third after what it called the deepest funding cuts ever.
The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said it had been forced to 'hyper-prioritise' humanitarian projects after savage donor cuts.
America under Donald Trump's new administration has led the retrenchment, though Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands have also all cut back.
The UN in December 2024 asked for £32bn ($44bn). After six months donors had given barely an eighth of the money requested.
The world organisation has now re-prioritised and asked for a lesser figure of £21bn ($29bn) instead, though said the original appeal still stood.
Tom Fletcher, the former UK diplomat who runs UNOCHA, said: 'Brutal funding cuts have left us with the cruel maths of doing less with less, even as the world around us remains on fire and as people die because we don't have the resources to save them.'
He went on: 'All we ask is one per cent of what you chose to spend last year on war.
'But this isn't just an appeal for money – it's a call for global responsibility, for human solidarity, for a commitment to end the suffering.'
The UN has been hit by a double blow of falling aid spending, and a budget black hole caused by many nations failing to pay their membership dues on time.
Individual agencies have admitted they are expecting to make heavy job cuts in order to stay afloat.
The World Food Programme (WFP) is already expected to cut up to 30 per cent of its staff, while the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said it would downsize its headquarters and regional offices to reduce costs by 30 per cent and cut senior-level positions by half.
The situation is so dire that the UN may reportedly be unable to pay its staff within months.
A confidential six-page discussion paper leaked last month suggested wholesale merging of agencies and departments, axing senior management positions and relocating staff to cheaper cities.
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