Seventy-five years ago, the world promised that people fleeing persecution would be protected and never sent back to danger. This December, governments will gather in Geneva to celebrate that promise, yet many of them are quietly withdrawing the money that keeps it alive. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is missing nearly two-thirds of its budget for 2026, a shortfall of $5.5 billion.
Running on fumes
UNHCR’s available funding fell by about a quarter in a single year, from $5.2 billion in 2024 to $3.9 billion in 2025. This year is worse. By 9 October, the agency had received $3 billion of the $8.5 billion it needs for 2026, just 35%. Its forecast for 2027 is even lower, at around $2.68 billion.
Do not assume that a fall in funding means a fall in need. 117 million people are forcibly displaced worldwide, and UNHCR has responded to 22 emergencies in 18 countries so far this year. The need is still alarmingly present, yet the agency has shed nearly 8,000 staff since 2024 – its workforce falling from around 20,000 to just under 12,000.
Who is to blame?
These cuts were conscious choices, made by wealthy countries who do not have to bear the brunt of refugee protection like their poorer counterparts.
The fall in funding can be largely attributed to the United States stepping away. In 2024, the US was UNHCR’s largest donor by far, giving it around $812 million. This year, it has given $89 million and dropped to ninth place.
Germany is also to blame – slipping from the second largest donor for a decade to sixth in 2025, and cutting its humanitarian emergency budget by 53%. France announced aid cuts of more than €2 billion, and the Netherlands announced a €2.4 billion cut from 2027.
The United Kingdom is guilty too. It was UNHCR’s sixth-largest donor in 2024, yet it plans to cut overseas aid from 0.5% to 0.3% of national income by 2027. Together, France, Germany, Japan, the UK and the US accounted for 96% of the fall in global aid in 2025.
A different choice is possible – Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway and Sweden exceed the UN target of giving 0.7% of national income in aid. So far in 2026, Ireland, Luxembourg, and Iceland substantially increased their UNHCR contributions. If smaller states can keep their promise to refugee protection, why can’t larger ones?
Funding cuts on the ground
UNHCR’s September report, Protection Eroded: The Human Cost of Underfunding, estimates that nearly 8.3 million refugees and displaced people risk losing its assistance. This assistance comes in many forms, not just food and tents, but paperwork, safeguarding, and the protection of children.
Chad shows what funding cuts look like. Around 319,000 refugees, mostly from Sudan, face delays in registration. Without papers, they cannot access services and risk detention. Women and children are at great risk here – with up to 200,000 women and girls who could lose access to safe spaces, and 233,000 children who need access to child protection services.
In Ethiopia, the number of safe houses for survivors of gender-based violence has more than halved in a year, from 29 to 13, and child protection coverage in some areas has fallen by up to 85%.
In Afghanistan, more than a million people have returned this year, many of them pushed out of Pakistan and Iran. Returnees once received a monetary grant of $375 per person on arrival; today it is just $170 per household. UNHCR’s reintegration grants have reached only 175 households so far this year, against 5,300 in 2024.
You can’t half protect a refugee
Protection cannot be rationed or halved among those who need it. UNHCR’s own explanation of underfunding emphasises that you cannot deliver 60% of a legal status or half a safe house. When protection is not delivered in full, it is failure.
Danger catches up.
A child without protection is exposed to exploitation.
A woman without a safe house may see no way out but to go back to danger.
Some move again, often into the hands of traffickers.
The funding cuts do not end displacement. They prolong it and make it more dangerous.
Sharing the load
Refugee protection has never been shared equally. Low- and middle-income countries host 68% of the world’s refugees. The poorest countries, home to 8% of the world’s population and just 0.3% of global GDP, host 18% of refugees worldwide. In mid-2025, one in every eight people in Lebanon was a refugee, and that was before Israeli strikes displaced more than a million people inside Lebanon this year.
Funding cuts hit countries like Chad and Ethiopia, already stretched by conflict and poverty.
Funding UNHCR is how wealthy states share that burden without hosting most refugees themselves. When they cut it, we must ask: how are they sharing the burden now?
Taking responsibility again – What should donors do?
More money is the obvious answer, but how money is given matters just as much.
- Give flexible funding: more and more donors now decide exactly where their money goes, meaning a share of UNHCR funding is tied to specific projects. That leaves the agency unable to move money to where the need is greatest, and neglected crises lose out. Untied funding lets the agency respond where it matters most.
- Protect the ground: registrations, safe houses, and child protection services do not scale down successfully. Below a certain point, they just stop working. Donors should guarantee funding for these core services first, so basic safeguarding stays in place regardless of what else may be cut.
- Share the load fairly: contributions should reflect what countries can afford. Wealthy countries should have no excuse to pull their contributions while smaller economies fulfil their responsibilities.
An empty promise
UNHCR will mark the Refugee Convention’s 75th anniversary at a High Commissioner’s Dialogue in Geneva on 7–8 December.
Speeches will be made about the promise to protect the forcibly displaced. But they need funding, not empty promises.
Photo by Ninno JackJr on Unsplash
