UNHCR sounds the alarm and warns of a funding shortfall

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The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Barham Salih, warned Monday that a severe funding shortage is limiting the UNHCR's ability to help refugees.

Saleh said that the UNHCR has severely reduced the number of its employees due to budget cuts, while the number of forcibly displaced people remains close to record levels.

He continued, "As of October 9, the funds available to us amounted to three billion dollars, or 35 percent of our total needs for 2026, which amount to 8.5 billion dollars."

The Commission currently expects its funding to reach about $2.68 billion in 2027.

Saleh explained that this year, the Commission responded to 22 states of emergency declared in 18 countries, including 17 new states of emergency in 15 countries.

Saleh said that the UNHCR is seeking to maintain front-line operations by cutting jobs at its headquarters in Geneva and its regional offices around the world, with 88 percent of staff remaining outside the headquarters. He added that about 95 percent of staff carrying out protection work, such as registering refugees, providing legal assistance and helping refugees find longer-term solutions such as safe return to their homes, have been retained in field sites.

He cited several examples of programs facing a threat. In Chad, he said, lack of funding threatens to disrupt specialized medical care and legal assistance for more than 50,000 survivors of conflict-related sexual violence who have fled neighboring Sudan.

In Ethiopia, he said that the registration of tens of thousands of refugees coming from South Sudan and Eritrea had been suspended. The former Iraqi president, who was himself a refugee at one point in his life, presented this bleak situation during the opening of the annual meeting of the Executive Committee of the Commission, which continues until Friday.

The number of forcibly displaced people around the world reached about 117.8 million people at the end of 2025, according to UNHCR, a slight decrease from the record level recorded in 2024 of 123.2 million people.

Of these, 35.6 million people were refugees under UNHCR's mandate, two-thirds of whom came from Venezuela, Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan and Sudan.

The deficit comes in the wake of aid cuts from countries including the United States under President Donald Trump, at a time of unprecedented global displacement.

Of the $2.44 billion that the Commission received in voluntary contributions in 2026, the European Union provided $408 million, making it its largest donor, followed by Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Denmark as the most contributing countries.

The United States ranked ninth with a contribution of $89 million, down from $812 million last year.

As for China, it provided $1.8 million.