UNHCR Warns Budget Cuts Could Leave 11.6 Million Refugees Without Aid

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has issued an urgent warning that up to 11.6 million refugees and forcibly displaced people—approximately one-third of those reached by the agency last year—are at risk of losing access to life-saving humanitarian assistance due to drastic budget cuts and shrinking international support.

A newly published report paints a grim picture of the humanitarian landscape in 2025, as conflict, climate disasters, and economic instability drive rising displacement, while global funding and political will falter. Women and children, often the most vulnerable, are bearing the brunt of the crisis, with basic services—food, shelter, education, and healthcare—being scaled back or suspended across multiple regions.

$1.4 Billion in Life-Saving Aid Slashed

According to UNHCR, $1.4 billion worth of essential programmes have already been cut or put on hold. This includes food and cash assistance, medical care, education, legal protection, and even core safety mechanisms such as safe shelters for women and survivors of gender-based violence.

“Behind these numbers are real lives, hanging in the balance,” said the report. “Families are seeing the support they relied on vanish, forced to choose between feeding their children, buying medicines or paying rent, while hope for a better future slips out of sight.”

Human Impact Across Global Refugee Hotspots

The impact of the cuts is widespread and devastating:

• In Chad and South Sudan, the relocation of new refugee arrivals from insecure border areas has been paused, leaving thousands exposed in dangerous, remote zones.

• In Uganda, malnutrition rates are soaring in refugee reception centres due to inadequate food and water supplies.

• In Bangladesh, education for 230,000 Rohingya refugee children is under threat, potentially leaving a generation without learning opportunities.

• In Lebanon, the agency’s entire health program is at risk of shutting down by the end of the year.

Shelter and financial assistance, two of the most urgent needs among displaced families, have been cut globally by 60%. In Niger, families are living in overcrowded conditions or facing homelessness. In Ukraine, financial aid has been slashed to levels that barely cover food, let alone rent or medical costs.

Protection and Legal Services Severely Affected

Services critical to refugee safety and dignity—such as registration, child protection, gender-based violence prevention, and legal aid—have been particularly hard-hit:

• In South Sudan, 75% of UNHCR-supported safe spaces for women and girls have closed, leaving 80,000 vulnerable women and girls without access to care, psychosocial support, or protection from abuse.

• In Latin America, including Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Mexico, refugees are unable to secure legal status due to stalled investments in asylum systems, pushing them further into poverty and exposing them to exploitation and abuse.

Programs supporting resettlement and voluntary return have also been compromised. For instance, among the 1.9 million Afghans who have returned or been forced back to Afghanistan in 2025, most have received little more than a few days’ worth of food assistance—far below the threshold needed for dignified reintegration.

A Funding Crisis at a Dangerous Crossroads

The report emphasizes that UNHCR’s global funding requirement for 2025 stands at $10.6 billion, but only 23% of that has been received by the mid-year point. If additional funding does not materialize, the organization warns it will be forced to continue reducing operations to only the most life-saving activities, abandoning development-linked initiatives, community resilience programs, and long-term solutions.

“Every sector and operation has been hit,” the report states. “Critical support is being suspended simply to keep basic aid going.”

Incentives for refugee volunteers, who often provide front-line services in camps and settlements, have also been severely impacted—eliminating both a source of income and a vital support structure for vulnerable communities.

Call to Action for Global Solidarity

The UNHCR is appealing to governments, international institutions, and individual donors to urgently increase financial contributions and bridge the dangerous funding gap.

“UNHCR has the systems, partnerships, and expertise to rapidly resume and scale up assistance,” the report concludes. “But without adequate funding, we cannot act.”

While the agency expressed gratitude to donors who have remained committed amid financial pressures, it reiterated that the global community must not turn its back on refugees during one of the most precarious moments in recent humanitarian history.

Without renewed support, millions will be left without the means to survive, and the world will edge closer to a full-scale protection crisis for the forcibly displaced.