By Nicholas Larsen, International Banker
According to the United Nations (UN), less than 17 percent of the $46 billion needed to meet global humanitarian needs in 2025 had been received by the end of June. The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) also found that this represents a massive 40-percent drop compared to the same period in 2024. And with many of the world’s largest donors chiefly responsible for this shortfall, aid agencies now find themselves in desperately dire situations, as they aim to address a multitude of humanitarian crises on limited budgets.
Indeed, analysis by Oxfam published in June found that the countries that comprise the G7 (Group of Seven)—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States—and that together account for around three-quarters of all official development assistance, will slash their aid spending by 28 percent for 2026 from 2024 levels. If realised, the aid cuts will be the biggest since the G7 was established in 1975 and in aid records going back to 1960.
“The G7’s retreat from the world is unprecedented and couldn’t come at a worse time, with hunger, poverty, and climate harm intensifying,” Helen Stawski, Oxfam’s policy lead, said of the research. “The G7 cannot claim to build bridges on one hand while tearing them down with the other. It sends a shameful message to the Global South that G7 ideals of collaboration mean nothing.”
The impacts of the sudden and steep cuts to aid are already being acutely felt across the world. The United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe (UNRIC) cited two key examples among many of the devastating consequences that those in dire need of aid will experience due to the cuts. “Lack of funding is preventing a rapid response to a cholera epidemic among refugee populations in eastern Chad. In Ukraine, more than 640,000 women will lose access to psychological support related to gender-based violence and to UNFPA safe spaces.”
According to the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) director-general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the cuts are now causing “the most severe disruptions to health systems since the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic”, with the latest WHO analysis revealing that health aid is projected to decline by up to 40 percent this year compared to just two years ago. “This is not a gradual shift—it is a cliff edge,” the director-general acknowledged in a press briefing held on August 7. “Lifesaving medicines are sitting in warehouses, health workers are losing their jobs, clinics are closing, and millions are missing out on care.”
Women are also expected to suffer disproportionately as a result of the global aid cuts. In March 2025, UN Women conducted a rapid global survey of 411 organisations across 44 countries to understand how funding reductions were affecting local women-led groups in crisis settings. “The results are alarming: 90 percent of respondents said their operations were financially impacted, nearly half expect to shut down within six months, and most have already reduced staff or suspended key services,” the report found.
“Programmes that protect women and girls are being cut back just as needs intensify,” the report added. “Women’s organizations serving refugees, LGBTIQ+ people, women with disabilities, and Indigenous communities report rising violence and harmful coping strategies like child marriage and survival sex.”
As for children in need of aid, leading agencies are now sounding the alarm bells, warning that the funding cuts are putting their work under severe threat. “Hundreds of thousands of children facing war, starvation, poverty and disease are being denied food and medical support as essential supplies have been held up at borders and in warehouses for weeks,” the children-focused humanitarian organisation Save the Children explained on March 5.
“We are talking about stopping aid to severely malnourished children in the middle of treatment. Closing clinics supporting pregnant women and newborn babies. It’s absolutely excruciating. I am in tears every single day,” Gabriella Waaijman, Save the Children International’s chief operating officer, lamented. “We have been forced to immediately stop our lifesaving work—while children are facing extreme hunger in Sudan. While war and heavy fighting continue to rage in the Democratic Republic of Congo. While families in Lebanon and Syria are fighting to survive and rebuild. And when climate change is threatening millions of children’s lives and futures around the globe.”
In terms of the countries administering the harshest cuts, Oxfam identified the United States (down $33 billion), the United Kingdom (down $5 billion), Germany (down $3.5 billion) and France (down $3 billion) as chiefly responsible. Foreign assistance typically represents around 1 percent of the US federal budget, but Congress’s decision to slash Washington’s foreign-aid expenditures by about $8 billion in mid-July under a “rescissions” package aimed at shrinking federal spending could prove hugely consequential in exacerbating crises all over the world. The impacts of the aid cuts are expected to balloon further when accounting for the United States’ decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization in January 2025.
“While further damage to PEPFAR and Food For Peace has fortunately been spared for now, Congress’ rescission of about $8 billion in health and humanitarian aid funding reinforces the ongoing withdrawal of US leadership in global health and humanitarian assistance—an area that has historically received bipartisan support—and will further harm some of the world’s most vulnerable communities,” Mihir Mankad, director of global health advocacy and policy at Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) USA (Doctors Without Borders), warned following the Congressional action. Mankad identified the revocation of nearly $500 million for family planning and reproductive-health services as being “particularly devastating”, especially as the US government had previously provided more than 40 percent of global support in this area.
“We’re already seeing the life-threatening impacts of these decisions, not just around family planning and reproductive health, but across the board,” Mankad added. “Humanitarian and medical groups have been left scrambling to carry out lifesaving services without money, staff, or certainty about what comes next. Doctors don’t know what to tell their patients when they ask where they’ll be able to continue their HIV or tuberculosis care. Community leaders can’t assure their neighbours that there will be organizations around to vaccinate kids against deadly diseases. The rescissions package will only make this situation worse for those most in need.”
In February, meanwhile, the UK government announced the largest cut to its international-aid budget in 25 years, slashing spending from 0.5 percent to 0.3 percent of gross national income by 2027, in response to pressure from the US to increase defence spending to 2.5 percent. With further details of the government’s actions revealed in July through a Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) report and impact assessment, the biggest cuts this year are expected to materialise in Africa-based funding, with the report confirming that less will be spent on women’s health as well as water and sanitation. As such, the risks of disease and death will increase.
Bond, a UK network for international development organisations, told the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) that it was clear that the government was “deprioritising” funding “for education, gender and countries experiencing humanitarian crises such as South Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia, and surprisingly the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Sudan, which the government said would be protected”.
“It is concerning that bilateral funding for Africa, gender, education and health programmes will drop,” Bond’s policy director, Gideon Rabinowitz, added. “The world’s most marginalised communities, particularly those experiencing conflict, and women and girls, will pay the highest price for these political choices. At a time when the US has gutted all gender programming, the UK should be stepping up, not stepping back.”
In June, the UN announced a “hyper-prioritised” plan to allocate funding towards helping 114 million people facing life-threatening needs across the world. The plan requires $29 billion in funding. However, with around 300 million people in dire need globally, the plan also leaves nearly 200 million people beyond the capabilities of its response.
“We have been forced into a triage of human survival,” said Tom Fletcher, the UN’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator. “The math is cruel, and the consequences are heartbreaking. Too many people will not get the support they need, but we will save as many lives as we can with the resources we are given.”
Given the funding levels so far in 2025, even many of those targeted by the “hyper-prioritised” plan are likely to be left with their needs unmet, according to Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). “Alongside traditional humanitarian donors, we need to see other[s] step up to bridge this gap, including a wider group of donor countries and the private sector,” Egeland urged. “Development actors, including development banks, must also step up their investments in fragile and conflict-affected countries so that displaced people and host communities can access the support they need.”