UN to Cut 20% of Humanitarian Staff Amid Funding Crisis

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) will slash its global workforce by 20 per cent, citing what it calls “brutal cuts” in donor funding that have left the agency with a staggering $58 million shortfall for 2025.

In a letter to staff obtained by the Associated Press, U.N. humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher warned that the crisis comes at a time when global needs are growing and humanitarian workers are already “underfunded, overstretched, and literally under attack”.

The agency currently employs about 2,600 staff across more than 60 countries. The planned cuts, Fletcher said, are part of a broader effort to reconfigure operations to align with reduced resources and to streamline internal bureaucracy. This includes a significant reduction in senior-level posts at U.N. headquarters and in several regional offices.

Among the countries where OCHA will scale back its presence are Cameroon, Colombia, Eritrea, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, and the Turkish city of Gaziantep, which serves as a humanitarian hub for operations in Syria.

Fletcher did not explicitly name the source of the budget cutbacks but strongly suggested that the United States—a long-time leader in humanitarian assistance—had slashed its contributions. The U.S. has historically accounted for roughly 20 per cent of OCHA’s extra-budgetary resources, amounting to about $63 million annually.