UNITED NATIONS: The World Food Program and the United Nations refugee agency will slash jobs because of funding cuts, mainly from the United States, officials told AP on Tuesday, warning the reductions will severely affect aid programs worldwide.
The WFP, also a United Nations organization, is expected to cut up to 30 percent of its staff. The head of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said it would downsize its headquarters and regional offices to reduce costs by 30 percent and cut senior-level positions by 50 percent.
That’s according to internal memos obtained by The AP and verified by two UN officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the internal personnel decisions. Other agencies like UNICEF — the UN children’s agency, and OCHA — the organization’s humanitarian agency — have also announced or plan to announce cuts that would impact around 20 percent of staff and overall budgets.
One WFP official called the cuts “the most massive” seen by the agency in the past 25 years, and that as a result, operations will disappear or be downsized.
The cuts to the UN agencies underscore the impact of President Donald Trump’s decision to pull back the US from its position as the world’s single largest aid donor. Trump has given billionaire ally Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency power to redo the scale of the federal government, with a focus on slashing foreign assistance. Even before the administration’s move, many donor nations had reduced humanitarian spending, and UN agencies struggled to reach funding goals.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “deeply troubled by the drastic funding reduction.”
“The heads of our humanitarian agencies are being forced to take impossibly painful decisions as budget cuts have an immediate and often deadly impact on the world’s most vulnerable,” Dujarric said in a statement to The AP. “We understand the pressures on national budgets faced by governments, but these cuts come at a time when military spending again hits record levels.”
World Food Program
The WFP, the world’s largest humanitarian organization, received 46 percent of its funding from the United States in 2024.
Asked about the planned cuts, the organization said in a statement that “in this challenging donor environment, WFP will prioritize its limited resources on vital programs that bring urgently needed food assistance to the 343 million people struggling with hunger and increasingly facing starvation.”
The internal memo said personnel cuts will “impact all geographies, divisions and levels” in the agency. It suggested further downsizing may be needed and said the agency will review its “portfolio of programs.”
In early April, The AP reported that the Trump administration had sent notices terminating funding for WFP programs in more than a dozen countries. The terminations were reversed days later in several countries but maintained the cuts in Afghanistan and Yemen, two of the world’s poorest and most war-ravaged countries.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees
The UN’s top refugee agency provides help to some 43.7 million refugees worldwide, along with others among the 122 million people driven from their homes by conflicts and natural disasters.
It said a statement that the agency will “have to significantly reduce our workforce,” including downsizing the headquarters and regional offices. UNHCR said some country offices will be closed, but it did not give an immediate figure of how many staff will be cut.
“The impact of this funding crunch on refugees’ lives is already devastating and will get far worse,” the agency said. Programs providing food, clean water, medicines, emergency shelter and other services “will reduce or stop.”
For example, it said, reduced funding will cut access to clean water for at least half a million displaced people in Sudan, increasing the risk of cholera and other disease outbreaks.
It will also hurt efforts to house and provide schooling for refugees from Sudan in South Sudan, Chad and Uganda. It warned that the lack of facilities in host countries will push more refugees to attempt dangerous crossings to Europe.
In the April 23 email to staff, the UNHCR chief said the headquarters and regional offices will be downsized to cut costs by 30 percent. It said senior-level positions will be capped to bring a 50 percent reduction.
The cuts “will affect our operations, the size of our organization, and, most worryingly, the very people we are called to protect,” it said. “It is critical that we prioritize, as we always have, the well-being and safety of refugees and of displaced and stateless people.”
UNHCR’s office in Lebanon — which is home to some 1 million refugees from Syria, is only 15 percent funded, its spokesperson Lisa Abou Khaled said.
This month, it had to stop cash assistance to 347,000 refugees — two-thirds of the number it previously helped — and funding for the remaining 200,000 will last only through June, she said. It also halted primary health services for some 40,000 refugees.
UNICEF
The UN children’s agency told AP in a statement Tuesday that it projects that its funding will be at least 20 percent less in 2025 compared to 2024.
“Hard-earned gains and future progress for children are at risk because of a global funding crisis in which some donors are sharply decreasing their financial support to UNICEF and our partners, as well as their contributions to international aid more broadly,” a UNICEF spokesperson said.
The organization said that while it has already implemented efficiency measures, “more cost-cutting steps will be required.” Officials are looking at “every aspect” of their sprawling operations in over 190 countries and territories, which focus on delivering life-saving and life-sustaining humanitarian aid and advocating for policies that promote children’s rights.
International Organization for Migration
The UN agency said last month that it had been hit by a 30 percent decrease in funding for the year, mainly because of US cuts. It said it was ending programs that affect 6,000 personnel and reducing its staff at headquarters by 20 percent.
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World Food Programme and other UN aid agencies slash jobs amid US funding cuts, officials say
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World Food Programme and other UN aid agencies slash jobs amid US funding cuts, officials say
- The WFP, also a United Nations organization, is expected to cut up to 30 percent of its staff
- UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “deeply troubled by the drastic funding reduction”
DR Congo’s amputees bear scars of years of conflict
GOMA: They survived the bombs and bullets, but many lost an arm or a leg when M23 fighters seized the city of Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo nearly a year ago.
Lying on a rug, David Muhire arduously lifted his thigh as a carer in a white uniform placed weights on it to increase the effort and work the muscles.
The 25-year-old’s leg was amputated at the knee — he’s one of the many whose bodies bear the scars of the Rwanda-backed M23’s violent offensive.
Muhire was grazing his cows in the village of Bwiza in Rutshuru territory, North Kivu province, when an explosive device went off.
He lost his right arm and right leg in the blast, which killed another farmer who was with him.
Fighting had flared at the time in a dramatic escalation of a decade-long conflict in the mineral-rich region that had seen the M23 seize swathes of land.
The anti-government M23 is one of a string of armed groups in the eastern DRC that has been plagued by internal and cross-border violence for three decades, partly traced back to the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
Early this year, clashes between M23 fighters and Congolese armed forces raged after the M23 launched a lightning offensive to capture two key provincial capitals.
The fighting reached outlying areas of Muhire’s village — within a few weeks, both cities of Goma and Bukavu had fallen to the M23 after a campaign which left thousands dead and wounded.
Despite the signing in Washington of a US-brokered peace deal between the leaders of Rwanda and the DRC on December 4, clashes have continued in the region.
Just days after the signing, the M23 group launched a new offensive, targeting the strategic city of Uvira on the border with the DRC’s military ally Burundi.
More than 800 people with wounds from weapons, mines or unexploded ordnance have been treated in centers supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in the eastern DRC this year.
More than 400 of them were taken to the Shirika la Umoja center in Goma, which specializes in treating amputees, the ICRC said.
“We will be receiving prosthetics and we hope to resume a normal life soon,” Muhire, who is a patient at the center, told AFP.
- ‘Living with the war’ -
In a next-door room, other victims of the conflict, including children, pedalled bikes or passed around a ball.
Some limped on one foot, while others tried to get used to a new plastic leg.
“An amputation is never easy to accept,” ortho-prosthetist Wivine Mukata said.
The center was set up around 60 years ago by a Belgian Catholic association and has a workshop for producing prostheses, splints and braces.
Feet, hands, metal bars and pins — entire limbs are reconstructed.
Plastic sheets are softened in an oven before being shaped and cooled. But too often the center lacks the materials needed, as well as qualified technicians.
Each new flare-up in fighting sees patients pouring into the center, according to Sylvain Syahana, its administrative official.
“We’ve been living with the war for a long time,” he added.
Some 80 percent of the patients at the center now undergo amputation due to bullet wounds, compared to half around 20 years ago, he said.
“This clearly shows that the longer the war goes on, the more victims there are,” Syahana said.
Lying on a rug, David Muhire arduously lifted his thigh as a carer in a white uniform placed weights on it to increase the effort and work the muscles.
The 25-year-old’s leg was amputated at the knee — he’s one of the many whose bodies bear the scars of the Rwanda-backed M23’s violent offensive.
Muhire was grazing his cows in the village of Bwiza in Rutshuru territory, North Kivu province, when an explosive device went off.
He lost his right arm and right leg in the blast, which killed another farmer who was with him.
Fighting had flared at the time in a dramatic escalation of a decade-long conflict in the mineral-rich region that had seen the M23 seize swathes of land.
The anti-government M23 is one of a string of armed groups in the eastern DRC that has been plagued by internal and cross-border violence for three decades, partly traced back to the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
Early this year, clashes between M23 fighters and Congolese armed forces raged after the M23 launched a lightning offensive to capture two key provincial capitals.
The fighting reached outlying areas of Muhire’s village — within a few weeks, both cities of Goma and Bukavu had fallen to the M23 after a campaign which left thousands dead and wounded.
Despite the signing in Washington of a US-brokered peace deal between the leaders of Rwanda and the DRC on December 4, clashes have continued in the region.
Just days after the signing, the M23 group launched a new offensive, targeting the strategic city of Uvira on the border with the DRC’s military ally Burundi.
More than 800 people with wounds from weapons, mines or unexploded ordnance have been treated in centers supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in the eastern DRC this year.
More than 400 of them were taken to the Shirika la Umoja center in Goma, which specializes in treating amputees, the ICRC said.
“We will be receiving prosthetics and we hope to resume a normal life soon,” Muhire, who is a patient at the center, told AFP.
- ‘Living with the war’ -
In a next-door room, other victims of the conflict, including children, pedalled bikes or passed around a ball.
Some limped on one foot, while others tried to get used to a new plastic leg.
“An amputation is never easy to accept,” ortho-prosthetist Wivine Mukata said.
The center was set up around 60 years ago by a Belgian Catholic association and has a workshop for producing prostheses, splints and braces.
Feet, hands, metal bars and pins — entire limbs are reconstructed.
Plastic sheets are softened in an oven before being shaped and cooled. But too often the center lacks the materials needed, as well as qualified technicians.
Each new flare-up in fighting sees patients pouring into the center, according to Sylvain Syahana, its administrative official.
“We’ve been living with the war for a long time,” he added.
Some 80 percent of the patients at the center now undergo amputation due to bullet wounds, compared to half around 20 years ago, he said.
“This clearly shows that the longer the war goes on, the more victims there are,” Syahana said.
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