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UNHCR Warns: 11.6 million people face loss of aid amid deepening funding crisis
UNHCR says it will reach only 45,000 women in 2025, less than half the number it served last year.
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has issued a stark warning that up to 11.6 million displaced and vulnerable people could be left without life-saving assistance this year due to a dramatic shortfall in humanitarian funding.
In a new report, UNHCR revealed that despite receiving $2.5 billion in contributions by mid-2025—just 23% of its global budget—it now faces an $8.1 billion shortfall against projected needs of $10.6 billion.
The agency expects to raise no more than $3.5 billion by the end of the year, roughly the same level of funding it received a decade ago, despite the number of forcibly displaced people reaching a record 122 million.
“This situation is unsustainable,” the report states. “Less funding equals less assistance, and that translates into real human suffering.”
The financial strain is already triggering severe cutbacks across all areas of UNHCR’s operations:
- 50% reduction in non-food assistance and shelter
- 35% cut in healthcare programs
- 34% reduction in education initiatives
- 25% decrease in legal support services
- 23% cut to gender-based violence response programs
- 7% reduction in voluntary repatriation efforts
“No area of intervention is fully funded,” the report says, noting that the further from Europe a region is, the deeper the gap becomes. While Europe receives 34% of the required funding, the Middle East and North Africa region receives just 20%.
UNHCR warns that these cuts are “not just statistics”—they represent millions of people who will be left without access to food, shelter, healthcare, education, or legal protection.
The agency highlighted Lebanon and Afghanistan as two of the most severely affected countries.
Lebanon, already buckling under the weight of economic collapse and conflict fallout, hosts over 1.4 million Syrian refugees and approximately 400,000 Palestinians. Due to funding shortages, UNHCR has already reduced its assistance programs in the country by 47%.
In recent months, more than 100,000 new Syrian arrivals have entered Lebanon, but resources are now so limited that the agency cannot provide basic shelter or support. Community programs designed to foster social cohesion have also been halted, threatening fragile stability in host communities.
In Afghanistan, where more than 1.5 million Afghans have been forcibly repatriated from Iran and Pakistan, the situation is becoming increasingly desperate. Tehran has signaled plans to expel up to 4 million undocumented Afghans, many of whom are women and children.
Due to funding cuts, protection activities have been reduced by over 50%, severely weakening programs for women’s empowerment, mental health, and prevention of gender-based violence. UNHCR says it will reach only 45,000 women in 2025, less than half the number it served last year.
Financial support for returnees has also been slashed. Refugee households now receive just $156, with an additional $40 per person for transportation—barely enough for basic food, let alone housing.
“These cuts increase exposure to harmful practices such as early marriage, child labor, and exploitation,” the agency warned.
The UNHCR cautioned that its shrinking operational capacity could accelerate new waves of displacement in already unstable regions such as South Sudan, Uganda, and Chad. The agency says the current map of budget cuts could quickly become a map of new humanitarian emergencies.
Despite the worsening outlook, UNHCR insists it has the expertise and infrastructure in place to deliver support where it is most needed. What is missing, it says, is global political will.
“UNHCR’s commitment remains steadfast,” the report concludes. “But without an urgent wave of international solidarity and new funding, decades of progress in protecting the world’s most vulnerable could be lost.”
President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery program on Thursday that allowed the suspect in the Brown University and MIT shootings to come to the United States.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on the social platform X that, at Trump’s direction, she is ordering the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the program, the Associated Press reported.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” she said of the suspect, Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente.
Neves Valente, 48, is suspected in the shootings at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine others, and the killing of an MIT professor. He was found dead Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said.
Neves Valente had studied at Brown on a student visa beginning in 2000, according to an affidavit from a Providence police detective. In 2017, he was issued a diversity immigrant visa and months later obtained legal permanent residence status, according to the affidavit. It was not immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017.
The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the U.S., many of them in Africa. The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges.
Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected when including spouses with the winners. After winning, they must undergo vetting to win admission to the United States. Portuguese citizens won only 38 slots.
Lottery winners are invited to apply for a green card. They are interviewed at consulates and subject to the same requirements and vetting as other green-card applicants.
Trump has long opposed the diversity visa lottery. Noem’s announcement is the latest example of using tragedy to advance immigration policy goals. After an Afghan man was identified as the gunman in a fatal attack on National Guard members in November, Trump’s administration imposed sweeping rules against immigration from Afghanistan and other counties.
While pursuing mass deportation, Trump has sought to limit or eliminate avenues to legal immigration. He has not been deterred if they are enshrined in law, like the diversity visa lottery, or the Constitution, as with a right to citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil. The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear his challenge to birthright citizenship.
Sixty-one members of the U.S. Congress have urged the Trump administration to reverse its decision to halt immigration processing for Afghan nationals, warning that the move unfairly targets Afghan nationals following a deadly shooting involving two National Guard members.
In a letter addressed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the lawmakers said the incident should not be used to vilify Afghans who are legally seeking entry into the United States. They stressed that Afghan applicants undergo extensive vetting involving multiple U.S. security agencies.
The letter criticized the suspension of Special Immigrant Visa processing, the termination of Temporary Protected Status for Afghanistan, and broader travel and asylum restrictions, warning that such policies endanger Afghan allies who supported U.S. forces during the war.
“Exploiting this tragedy to sow division and inflame fear will not make America safer. Abandoning those who made the courageous choice to stand beside us signals to those we may need as allies in the future that we cannot be trusted to honor our commitments. That is a mistake we cannot afford,” the group said.
The U.S. admitted nearly 200,000 Afghan nationals in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Thousands of Afghans who worked with the U.S. military and their families still wait at military bases and refugee camps around the world for a small number of SIVs.
An earthquake of magnitude 5.3 struck Afghanistan on Friday, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said.
The quake occurred at 10:09 local time at a depth of 35 km, USGS said.
Its epicentre was 25 kilometres from Nahrin district of Baghlan province in north Afghanistan.
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