• Children, refugees and displaced people worldwide are paying the price for the deep-seated funding crisis that has engulfed the international aid sector, made worse by pronounced cuts in Washington, UNICEF and UNHCR said.

• Spokespersons for UNICEF and UNHCR in Geneva warned that the liquidity crunch has jeopardised lifesaving work, including progress in reducing child mortality, which has fallen by 60 per cent since 1990.

• Due to funding shortages, around 1.3 million children could lose access to life-saving support and ready-to-use therapeutic foods this year in Nigeria and Ethiopia.

• In 2025, some 213 million children in 146 countries will need life saving humanitarian support, according to the UNICEF spokesperson.

• The severe financial crisis underway is also posing a security risk to staff, hampering humanitarians’ ability to deliver.

• UNHCR has also announced cuts to operations and programmes. It is the latest agency to face painful cutbacks in the field and at headquarters following the announcement of a drastic drawdown in funding from the US government.

• The agency was conducting a review to determine how many staff would have to be let go.

• UNHCR has already halted multiple initiatives including in South Sudan, Bangladesh and Europe, and closed offices in countries like Turkey.

• In Ethiopia, the organisation has suspended operations at a safehouse for women facing death threats.

UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR)

• The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is a global organisation dedicated to saving lives, protecting rights and building a better future for people forced to flee their homes because of conflict and persecution. 

• UNHCR emerged in the wake of World War II to help millions of Europeans displaced by the conflict. 

• The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was established on December 14, 1950 by the United Nations General Assembly with a three-year mandate to complete its work and then disband. 

• On July 28, 1951, the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees — the legal foundation of helping refugees and the basic statute guiding UNHCR’s work — was adopted.

• In 1954, UNHCR won the Nobel Peace Prize for its groundbreaking work in Europe.

• In 1981, it again won the Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to repatriate refugees in Asia, Africa and Latin America in the 1970s.

• The 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol are the key legal documents that form the basis of UNHCR’s work.

• They define the term ‘refugee’ and outline their rights and the international standards of treatment for their protection.

• UNHCR now has 18,879 personnel working in 137 countries. It has helped more than 50 million refugees to successfully restart their lives, and continue to protect and provide support for the 89.3 million people currently displaced.

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