Cairo - Officials told the Associated Press on Tuesday that the World Food Program and the United Nations Refugee Agency will cut work due to fund cuts, mainly from the United States, warning that the reduction will seriously affect aid programs around the world.
WFP is also a UN organization and is expected to reduce its staff by up to 30%. The head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said the headquarters and regional offices would be reduced to reduce costs by 30% and senior positions by 50%.
This was based on an internal memorandum obtained by the AP and was verified by two UN officials who discussed the decisions of internal personnel under anonymous conditions.
A WFP official said the cut was the "largest" the agency has seen in the past 25 years, and therefore operations will disappear or shrink.
The cuts in UN agencies underline the impact of President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the world's largest aid donors. Trump has given billionaire ally Ally Elon Musk and his government’s efficiency ministry powers to redo the federal government’s scale with a focus on cutting foreign aid. Even before the government relocation, many donor countries reduced humanitarian spending, and UN agencies worked to achieve funding goals.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “deeply troubled by the huge reduction in funding”.
“With the direct impact of the budget cuts on the world’s most vulnerable, the heads of our humanitarian agencies are forced to make painful decisions,” Dujarik said in a statement to the Associated Press. “We understand the pressures of the national budget faced by the government, but these cuts are at a time when military spending reaches record levels again.”
WFP, the world's largest humanitarian organization, received 46% of funding from the United States in 2024.
Asked about planned cuts, the organization said in a statement: “In this challenging donor environment, WFP will prioritize its limited resources that are limited in important programs that urgently need to bring hunger and increasingly hunger to dietary aid for 343 million people.”
The internal memorandum said the cuts would “affect all geography, zoning and hierarchy of the agency.” It suggested that further reductions may be needed and said the agency will review its “plan portfolio.”
The United Nations' top refugee agency has helped about 43.7 million refugees around the world, and 122 million people driven from their homes due to conflict and natural disasters.
It said the agency will “must significantly reduce our workforce” statement, including reducing the size of headquarters and regional offices. UNHCR said some country offices would be closed but did not immediately say how many employees would be laid off.
"The impact of this funding tightening on refugee lives has been devastating and will get worse," the agency said. Programs that provide food, water, medicines, emergency shelters and other services "will be reduced or stopped."
It said the reduced funding would reduce access to clean water for at least one million displaced people in Sudan, increasing the risk of cholera and other disease outbreaks.
This will also undermine the efforts of Sudanese refugees in Sudan, Chad and Uganda and provide education to refugees. It warned that the lack of facilities in the host country would prompt more refugees to try to jeopardize Europe.
The head of UNHCR said in an email to staff on April 23 that headquarters and regional offices would be reduced to 30 per cent. It said senior positions will be limited to a 50% reduction.
Cuts “will affect our operations, the size of our organizations, and most worryingly the people we are asked to protect,” it said. “It is crucial that we prioritize the well-being and security of refugees and displaced and stateless persons as usual.”
Its spokesman Lisa Abou Khaled said UNHCR’s office in Lebanon (about 1 million refugees from Syria) had only 15% of the funding.
This month, she said, it must stop cash aid to 347,000 refugees (two-thirds of the number of people who have previously provided assistance), and the remaining 200,000 funds will only last until June. It also stopped primary health services for about 40,000 refugees.
The United Nations agency said last month that funding has been reduced by 30% this year, mainly because we have cut it. It said it ended plans to affect 6,000 people and reduced its headquarters staff by 20%.
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The Associated Press's Sarah El Deeb in Beirut, Lee Keath in Cairo and Farnoush Amiri of the United Nations contributed to the report.