UN refugee agency's funding shortfall is impacting refugees worldwide, its chief says

GENEVA: Deep funding shortfalls are forcing the UN refugee agency to make painful cuts across its humanitarian operations worldwide, and there are limits to how much restructuring can offset shrinking donor support, its chief said on Monday (Oct 12).

UNHCR has secured only US$3 billion, or 35 per cent of the US$8.5 billion in funding it requires for 2026, High Commissioner Barham Salih told the agency's executive committee at a meeting in Geneva.

The shortfall follows aid cuts by countries including the United States under President Donald Trump ​at a time of record global displacement.

Funding for next year remains uncertain although the expected figure of around $2.68 billion could improve after a UNHCR donor pledging conference in December, Salih said. 

UNHCR has launched one of its largest restructurings in the agency's history because of the budget squeeze, with Salih saying its workforce had been reduced since 2024 from 20,000 employees to just under 12,000.

"Protection has a floor. Below it, the system does not simply become smaller. The protection we can provide begins to fail," he said.

Salih cautioned that restructuring could not compensate indefinitely for lower funding, and that the funding crisis was already having tangible consequences for refugees and humanitarian partners.

"There is a difference between doing more with less and being asked to do the impossible," he said.

JOB CUTS

UNHCR is seeking to preserve frontline operations by cutting jobs at its Geneva headquarters and worldwide regional offices, with 88 per cent of staff remaining outside headquarters, Salih said.

About 95 per cent of the staff doing protection work, such as registering refugees and providing legal assistance, and helping refugees find longer-term solutions, such as returning home safely, have been retained in field locations, he said. 

He cited several examples of programmes under threat. 

In Chad, he said, insufficient funding risks disrupting specialised medical care and legal assistance for more than 50,000 survivors of conflict-related sexual violence who fled neighbouring Sudan. 

In Ethiopia, refugee registration had been suspended for tens of thousands of refugees from South Sudan and Eritrea, he said.

Colombia has raised concerns on behalf of Latin American countries that their region is being disproportionately impacted. 

The Americas, which include the US, Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean, face a budget reduction of 32 per cent in 2027 compared to this year, or about $485 million — the largest budget reduction of any region — while the number of forcibly displaced and stateless people in the Americas is projected to increase by 4 per cent to about 24.5 million people in 2027, Salih said.