This year has brought many curveballs on an international scale, from trade wars to gold prices and conflicts ending and beginning. But one of the most consequential has unfolded more quietly: what some are calling the great humanitarian recession.
This week’s chart tells that story. According to a recent report and data from the Council on Foreign Relations, this year, just 28 per cent of global humanitarian funding needs were met. It is the lowest level on record and leaves nearly three-quarters of the required UN aid unfunded, a gap wider than at any point in the past decade.
When the UN launched its 2025 Global Humanitarian Overview (GHO) in Geneva last December, it appealed for $47.4 billion to support 189 million people across 42 emergencies. The UN’s humanitarian chief warned the world was “on fire”.
Soon after US President Donald Trump took office for a second term, one of the most significant ruptures to international aid occurred. Within the first month of office, Trump’s first executive order was to freeze all foreign aid funds. USAID and the UN were hit the hardest. Historically, the United States has been the single largest donor to the UN, and after Trump froze and then slashed foreign assistance, the effects were immediately felt on the ground. UN agencies had to ration and scale back programmes, cut food rations, and lay off staff. Twenty-five million fewer people received aid this year than the year before, even as conflict- and climate-driven crises intensified.
All of this was happening against the backdrop of catastrophic hunger and conflicts. In Gaza, Sudan, South Sudan and Yemen, more than one million people are now living in catastrophic or famine conditions. This year was also marked by two famine declarations occurring in a single year, a first this century.
Aid workers themselves also paid an unprecedented price this year, with more killed in the first half of the year than in any full year before 2023. In a field used to grim superlatives, this year earned a new one: the worst humanitarian year on record.
Despite the large gap this year, the squeeze has been building for years. Global appeals surged during Covid and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, peaking in 2022 when donors stepped up with record contributions. Since then, major donors have cut back sharply, including Germany, the UK, Japan and Saudi Arabia.
The funding gap chart points to an aid system under strain and a political will that seems to be failing to keep pace with ever-growing aid needs and global crises. Unless that gap narrows, this year may come to be remembered not only as a year of global instability, but as the moment the world stepped back from life-saving aid. UN agencies were forced to scale back programmes, reduce food rations, and lay off staff.
