Aid cuts leave refugee agency unable to shelter six in 10 fleeing war in Sudan

This article is published in association with United Nations.

Major cuts to aid budgets have already left people fleeing wars in Sudan and beyond without the assistance and protection they need, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Friday.

Globally, $1.4 billion of the agency’s programmes are being shuttered or put on hold, UNHCR said in a new report.

“We can’t stop water, you can’t stop sanitation, but we’re having to take decisions when it comes, for example, to shelter,” said UNHCR Director of External Relations Dominique Hyde.

“We’re have people arriving on a daily basis from Sudan, from the Darfur regions…arriving in Chad, not able to be given any shelter.”

In an urgent appeal for flexible funding from donors, Ms. Hyde noted that up to 11.6 million refugees and others risk losing access this year to direct humanitarian assistance from UNHCR. The figure represents about one third of those reached by the organization last year.

On the Sudan-Chad border, the UN agency is now unable to provide “even basic shelter” to more than six in 10 refugees fleeing the conflict. Thousands more vulnerable people have been left stranded in remote border locations in South Sudan too. “If we just had a bit more support, we could get them to settlements,” she insisted.

Because of the funding cuts, basic activities have already been hit hard. These include refugee registration, child protection, legal counselling and prevention of and responses to gender-based violence.

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All aid sectors hit

In South Sudan, 75 per cent of safe spaces for women and girls supported by UNHCR have closed. That means leaving up to 80,000 refugee women and girls without access to medical care, psychosocial support, legal aid, material support or income-generating activities. This includes survivors of sexual violence, UNHCR noted.

“Behind these numbers are real lives hanging in the balance,” Ms. Hyde said.

“Families are seeing the support they relied on vanish, forced to choose between feeding their children, buying medicines or paying rent, while hope for a better future slips out of sight. Every sector and operation has been hit and critical support is being suspended to keep lifesaving aid going.”

Libya influx

Many of those impacted by the war in Sudan have taken the decision to move from Chad and Egypt to Libya, into the hands of people smugglers who dangerously overload boats with desperate people seeking to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.

“What we’re observing now is that in terms of arrivals in Europe of…Sudanese refugees, [it] has increased since the beginning of the year by about 170 per cent compared to the first six months of 2024,” said UNHCR spokesperson Olga Sarrado.

Support slashed from Niger to Ukraine

In camps hosting Myanmar’s Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, education for some 230,000 children could now be suspended. Meanwhile in Lebanon “UNHCR’s entire health programme is at risk of being shuttered by the end of the year,” Ms. Hyde continued.

In Niger and other emergency settings, cuts in financial aid for shelter have left families in overcrowded structures or at risk of homelessness. In Ukraine, financial aid has also been slashed, “leaving uprooted families unable to afford rent, food or medical treatment”, she noted.

Assistance to returning Afghans has also become another victim of global aid cuts. Around 1.9 million Afghan nationals have returned home or been forced back since the start of the year, “but financial aid for returnees is barely enough to afford food, let alone rent, undermining efforts to ensure stable reintegration”, UNHCR said.

Legal aid halted

Overall, several UNHCR operations hit by severe funding gaps have now had to curtail investments in strengthening asylum systems and promoting regularisation efforts.

In Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Mexico, any prolonged lack of legal status means prolonged insecurity for people on the move, the UN agency said. This results in deepening poverty “as refugees are excluded from formal employment and greater exposure to exploitation and abuse”, Ms. Hyde explained.

Approximately one in three of the agency’s 550 offices around the world has been impacted by the cuts,Ms. Hyde told journalists in Geneva:

“We’re not in a position to do so much contingency planning; what we’re able to do is make decisions on priorities and, at this point, the priorities as I mentioned are dramatic.”

For 2025, UNHCR needs $10.6 billion. Only 23 per cent of this amount has been provided.

“Against this backdrop, our teams are focusing efforts on saving lives and protecting those forced to flee,” Ms. Hyde said. “Should additional funding become available, UNHCR has the systems, partnerships and expertise to rapidly resume and scale up assistance.”