Geneva – The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) issued a stark warning on Tuesday that a deepening funding crisis could leave almost 8.3 million refugees and forcibly displaced persons without essential assistance this year. The agency attributes the shortfall largely to recent aid reductions by the United States and other donor nations.
Funding gap and its scale
According to a new 26‑page UNHCR report, the organization now faces a $5.789 billion gap after its available resources fell 24 % between 2024 and 2025. As of July, UNHCR had received only 32 % of the $8.505 billion it projected needing for 2026. The agency expects the total population under its mandate to rise to 131.2 million by year‑end, up from 129.4 million at the close of last year.
Impact on protection services
“Below a certain threshold, the system doesn’t shrink, it fails,” the report states, highlighting how budget cuts jeopardize refugee registration, child‑protection programmes and services for survivors of gender‑based violence. In Chad, where refugees have fled conflict in neighboring Sudan, 319,000 people face registration delays and 200,000 women and girls risk losing access to safe spaces and prevention programmes.
In Sudan—the world’s worst displacement crisis, now in its fourth year of civil war—about 140,000 refugees and asylum‑seekers remained unregistered by mid‑year after registration activities were suspended for the first five months of 2026.
Specific country challenges
Afghanistan also feels the squeeze. UNHCR grants for returnees have been reduced from $375 to $170 per person, even as more than one million people have returned this year from Iran, Pakistan and other neighboring states.
UNHCR notes that cost‑saving measures already taken—cutting its workforce by 33 % in 2025, closing offices in 140 locations and ending operations in 15 countries compared with 2024—cannot fully offset the funding shortfall.
Donor restrictions compound the problem
The agency warns that an increasing share of donor money is tightly earmarked, rising to 51 % in 2026 from 19 % five years earlier. This limits UNHCR’s ability to shift resources to the most urgent needs, further eroding the protection system and increasing the risk that refugees remain undocumented and survivors of gender‑based violence lose critical support.
The report calls for renewed, unrestricted contributions from the international community to prevent a collapse of protection mechanisms that safeguard some of the world’s most vulnerable populations.
Original reporting: Appleton, WI News Feed (HLL/CB) — read the source article.
