UN humanitarian agency to cut staff by 20pc due to 'brutal cuts' in funding

The said it is cutting its 2,600 staff operating in more than 60 countries by 20 per cent because of “brutal cuts” in funding that have left it with a nearly $60 million shortfall.

UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said in a letter obtained on Friday, 11 April, by the Associated Press that “the humanitarian community was already underfunded, overstretched and literally, under attack” before the recent funding cuts.

In the letter to staff at the agency, he didn't say which country was responsible for the cuts that led to the funding crisis at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, known as OCHA, but he indicated it was the United States.

Fletcher said OCHA had an overall budget of around $430 million for 2025, noting that several countries have announced or implemented cuts to the agency's extra-budgetary resources. He singled out the United States.

“The US alone has been the largest humanitarian donor for decades,” he said, and the biggest contributor to OCHA's extra-budgetary resources, paying about 20 per cent — which amounts to $63 million for 2025. He did not say whether the US had cut that amount.

President has dismantled the US Agency for International Development, which was responsible for humanitarian aid, and has drastically curtailed funding that has kept millions of people alive around the world.

“To date, with projected cash outflows totalling $258.5 million, we find ourselves with a funding gap of almost $58 million,” Fletcher said in the letter.

While humanitarian needs have increased, he said, OCHA is already seeing the cuts hitting access to “life-saving support”. Humanitarian organisations that partner with the UN have been hit hard, with local groups “bearing the brunt," followed by international organisations and UN humanitarian agencies, he said.

Fletcher said OCHA needs to reconfigure its operations to match its resources and will reduce bureaucracy to become “less top heavy”. That will mean “substantially reducing” senior positions at UN headquarters and in some regions and countries.

“OCHA will scale back our presence and operations in Cameroon, Colombia, Eritrea, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Gaziantep (in Turkey), and Zimbabwe,” he said.