What’s shaping aid policy in 2026
Humanitarians are at a crossroads without a map.
As 2026 begins, the global emergency aid system is locked in a crisis of trust and legitimacy. It’s asked to do more with far less. Its leaders say reform is urgent, but big agencies show little appetite for change. Its top donors feed into the crises humanitarians are asked to extinguish. And it wants to appeal to broad public solidarity, but it ultimately answers to the governments who fund it.
Here are six trends confronting humanitarians on this road ahead. They are evolving risks, urgent dilemmas, and perhaps small opportunities to chart a different path forward.
Money: What happens when the funding dries up
Last year was dubbed the annus horribilis of the humanitarian system. But as bad as 2025’s cuts were, the effects are still unfolding as 2026 begins. The sector’s financial crisis is not a short-term glitch; it’s a forced remodelling of international aid and humanitarian response. As global funding hollows out, the impacts ripple down the chain. Humanitarians – and communities in crisis – are quickly learning a new mantra: doing less with less.
Why we’re watching: Make no mistake, the funding crisis is not just a money problem. It shows political hostility and indifference to the humanitarian project. This is demonstrated starkly by a much-reduced institutional landscape. The world’s most powerful bilateral aid agency, USAID, is gone, the United Nations system is on the ropes, and other top donors are making considerable cutbacks to humanitarian staff and expertise. The list of countries that have flagged aid cuts in 2026 or beyond include Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and of course the volatile United States.
Budget shortfalls of up to 60% are common across the multilateral system, one analysis found, and the impacts domino. Some agencies say they’ll be reducing support for local partners, while some foresee international groups competing with their grassroots counterparts for shrinking funds. Women-led groups in crisis areas have been pushed to the edge: Half were at risk of closure, UN Women reported, and only 5% thought they could keep running for more than two years. Meanwhile, there are knowledge black holes as analysis and monitoring functions get cut – as well as the resources to listen to communities that use aid. This highlights a core contradiction: Humanitarians are re-upping old promises to localise aid and to “put people facing crises first”; the indicators suggest the opposite may happen.
That’s just scratching the surface of what it means for people in emergencies. The international humanitarian system faces escalating 2026 crises with the money it had in 2016. Analysts point to a “geographic reprioritisation” where agencies focus on select countries or regions. So-called “hyper-prioritised” plans squeeze responses into haves and neglected have-nots.
And rather than cutting back collectively in a strategic, reformist manner (for instance, by following a timely plan), the UN’s various reductions are reported to be siloed, uncoordinated, and cut-throat, with agencies prioritising their own interests. The international system finds itself in a “humanitarian reset”, pushed by UN relief chief Tom Fletcher as a mix of cuts, efficiency gains, and reforms to global coordination. But many see this as more of a shrinking than a reset – only so much money can be regained through finding efficiencies when funding has collapsed. Bottom line: The multilateral humanitarian system is getting smaller, and it’s therefore doing less for people stuck in crisis.
Next steps: The Trump administration’s destruction of USAID saw the influence of other government donors multiply overnight. Those still with skin in the game have more power than ever to influence changes – big or small – or to maintain business-as-usual on a shrinking scale.
But what do these governments want? Some of the sector’s middleweight donors say they don’t want to see “blunt slashing”. But they’ve also been relatively reserved when weighing in on the humanitarian reset, or the decade-old Grand Bargain reform process. The reset may be oversold as a reform plan. But for all the calls for a deeper reimagining of humanitarianism, there seems to be little appetite for that from the system’s top funders.
When money is scarce, eyes predictably turn towards the private sector (more on that below) and so-called “emerging donors”. In reality, Gulf states like the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar are already significant contributors – top 10 relief spenders in 2025. Fletcher did his rounds in all three countries in 2025, and did a joint CNN interview with the UAE’s international cooperation minister following a $550 million pledge. Elsewhere, Fletcher called for Chinese leadership in humanitarianism as part of a trip to Beijing. China has not been a big donor to the multilateral humanitarian system. Some say Beijing has bigger aims: Last year’s Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit saw the launch of a dedicated development bank, and President Xi Jinping announced a “Global Governance Initiative”, which some analysts read as another signal that “China intends to lead the development of a new international order”.
Big tech and the private sector: Desperate times make for strange bedfellows
Empty wallets and the allure of AI are speeding up the rush to private sector partnerships. Some collaborations make sense; others are incoherent.
Why we’re watching: Aid groups have always been drawn to private sector knowhow or shiny new tech. Plummeting budgets and the promise of efficiency and innovation are pushing this pursuit into overdrive. One US industry poll suggested two thirds of international NGOs expect to strike new strategic partnerships with a for-profit organisation in the coming months.
Humanitarian groups and corporations don’t share the same goals, principles, or values. This tension is growing especially fraught as big name tech and artificial intelligence companies pivot to weapons and war. One oft-cited example: the World Food Programme’s opaque partnership with Palantir, the CIA-linked big data analytics firm that is helping armies kill and states surveil. While at least one investor has dumped Palantir over its work in Israel, WFP reportedly re-upped its partnership. It says Palantir is helping its “data-informed decision-making”.
Whether tech or legacy corporations, the humanitarian rolodex of private sector partners already shares something in common with UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s “economy of genocide” report.
The International Rescue Committee promotes its chatbot collab with OpenAI, and advocates for migrants on the US border. OpenAI, meanwhile, is lending its AI to defence and weapons firm Anduril, which is militarising the border with anti-migrant AI sentry towers (and speeding ahead with the manufacturing of autonomous drones globally).
Whether tech or legacy corporations, the humanitarian rolodex of private sector partners already shares something in common with UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s “economy of genocide” report. Her rundown of the corporate machinery fuelling Israel’s occupation of Palestine names the likes of Amazon, BlackRock, Google, Hyundai, IBM, and Microsoft – sought-after partners, panel headliners, or board members.
You don’t need a long memory to understand how awkward relationships can burn humanitarians or people who rely on aid. Boston Consulting Group, the ubiquitous US management consultancy, helped create the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which Israel used to sideline actual aid groups. GHF ran chaotic, militarised distribution sites around which hundreds of Palestinian aid seekers were killed. Save the Children suspended its work with BCG (many others didn’t bother), then resumed its partnership months later. BCG and other management consultancies continue their extensive pro bono (and faux bono) work across the aid sector – including advising on cuts, restructuring, response, and strategy.
Why does it matter? There’s more than reputations at stake. The international humanitarian system faces a crisis of trust and legitimacy. Aid leaders speak of rejuvenating humanitarianism behind a broad social movement based on global solidarity. Whether with donor governments, companies, foundations, or other aid groups, incoherent partnerships feed cynicism and confusion, not trust – including among aid workers, communities in crisis, and citizens of countries that give or receive aid. For a sector that defines itself by its principles, those of its partners can be a weak link.
Next steps: Many private sector partnerships may make perfect sense, and no one expects humanitarians to shun opportunities to improve or streamline aid. But the sector is missing common standards for how its principles apply to corporate relations – not to mention guardrails and a shared understanding of the benefits, tradeoffs, and power dynamics for AI in particular (there’s work underway on a possible AI framework at the IASC – the high-level strategic coordination body).
Awkward collabs mirror the tensions baked into a global system funded by voluntary contributions from governments. After all, the system’s former top donor may be the ultimate problematic partner. The US supports allies accused of genocide, blocks climate change solutions, breaks international law, and opposes the International Criminal Court; it was also the world’s largest humanitarian donor by volume. Less than a year after destroying American aid, Jeremy Lewin, a one-time Elon Musk staffer who played a key role in US cuts, shared a stage with the UN relief chief to announce $2 billion in humanitarian funding (the money, he said, should be “advancing American national interests”). Fletcher called the US a “humanitarian superpower”. Days later, the Trump administration violated international law by abducting Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, and claimed that the US would run the country. And while Fletcher shares CNN screentime with the international cooperation minister of the UAE (which is accused of feeding Sudan’s civil war), the minister shares photo-ops with EDGE, the Emirati state-owned weapons and drones manufacturer.
Evolving risks: Drones, detention, and influencers
Weapons and tactics are changing quickly and growing more complex, and so are the risks to aid workers. Are humanitarians prepared for what’s ahead?
Why we’re watching: Drone attacks by militaries and armed groups are multiplying exponentially – from Israeli strikes outside a medical clinic in Lebanon, to a hit that suspended operations at a key humanitarian crossing on the Chadian border. We highlighted it as a key trend worsening risks for civilians; it’s also confounding aid workers. Sector analysis shared with The New Humanitarian showed a recent quadrupling of drone “incidents” disrupting aid. In some areas of Sudan, more than 70% of attacks affecting NGOs are delivered by drones. Surveillance is a growing risk too: Drones are also used to monitor aid operations and communities receiving aid.
Humanitarians are especially ill-equipped for the rise of influencers and harmful information. As Trump and Musk know well, a simple narrative is more powerful than data.
Humanitarians are struggling to adapt. One hint of the stumbles: Last year, analysts Insecurity Insight issued basic safety guidelines for armed drones, including this debunking of a widely reported claim: “Yoga mats do not provide cover.” Some aid actors have tried using radio frequency jammers to disrupt drones, but this has unintended consequences: “Drone jamming devices may be interpreted as a form of electronic warfare,” says aid security coordination group INSO.
Security specialists say it’s a sign of the tech-deepened threats ahead, along with AI and autonomous weapons systems, and more sophisticated cyberattacks. “The sector must treat drones as the first wave of a wider technological shift,” warns GISF, a security risk management network.
Meanwhile, authorities are arresting and detaining so many aid workers that security analysts had to create a new category to track attack trends. The Aid Worker Security Database counted at least 165 staff detained in 2025, from Myanmar and Yemen to South Sudan and Burkina Faso. States are using detention to intimidate aid workers, or to pressure organisations. In Myanmar, more than 240 aid workers have been arrested or detained in the last five years. In Yemen, aid organisations have few answers for the mass detention (and unexplained deaths) of their staff.
Lastly, weaponised narratives are reshaping risks, access, and even funding. Humanitarians are especially ill-equipped for the rise of influencers and harmful information. As Trump and Musk know well, a simple narrative is more powerful than data; a convincing story, repeated often, beats a few facts.
In Burkina Faso and elsewhere in the Sahel, humanitarians face an intensely hostile online environment that Insecurity Insight says is redefining perceptions of aid – and “foreshadowing” real-world harms such as suspensions, detentions, and violence against staff. Some attacks are outlandish. But focusing on facts overlooks a storyline rooted in foreign interference and colonial harms. It’s one thing to correct an untruth; it’s another to dispel a narrative tapping into genuine sentiment.
Next steps: Aid workers already face record violence and killings. The vast majority are from the states or communities where they work. Funding for risk management and post-incident support has always been a weak spot – especially for local staff and organisations. But the sector-wide funding cuts have worsened what some call a “localisation of insecurity”. A new charter of rights for frontline workers tries to address some of the imbalance: It calls for equal protective protection, compensation, and mental health support for all staff (regardless of nationality or contract type). Several countries have also signed on to a new declaration on protecting humanitarians, which includes language on “the inequitable risk” faced by local staff and volunteers. But the weapons that kill aid workers come from somewhere – including the countries that fund humanitarian action. As we said last year, there’s no aid fix for impunity.
Climate: An emerging institutional recognition of justice
Amid these massive challenges, it’s possible to see silver linings if you squint. Climate-vulnerable nations and social movements are racking up wins where international negotiations have stalled. And legal institutions are taking on serious cases against major polluters, in the sort of litigations that campaigners could only dream of a few years back.
Why we’re watching: The global crisis landscape is bleak, fossil fuels are back in fashion (see US plans to seize Venezuela’s oil), and climate disasters are pretty much guaranteed to worsen – largely because of emissions caused by wealthier countries. But the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) – an institution that only exists because of extensive climate justice campaigning – is alive, if not yet kicking. The fund is essentially the international community’s answer to the prospect of growing damages caused by climate change – particularly amid massive shortcomings delivering adaptation finance that could dampen their impact.
In the grand scheme of things, the money on offer for loss and damage is very little: As of early 2026, the fund was worth about $500 million, compared to at least $8 billion in damages caused in Jamaica by Hurricane Melissa – a sizable chunk of the country’s Gross Domestic Product.
But despite well-documented challenges, the bottom line is that the fund exists, and it will soon start doing what no other institution does: payouts specifically related to losses and damages caused by climate disasters that don’t fit into traditional humanitarian or development responses. The fund exists because enough elements of the international community – from more powerful countries like Pakistan, to small island states, to activists – stood their ground in demanding climate justice. If the loss and damage fund is successful, it could force other institutions to up their game by showing that smoother applications and speedy disbursements aren’t just the stuff of multilateral myth. A working fund for disaster damages also provides a tangible, if small, remedy for climate hopelessness.
A faster climate fund could also benefit the humanitarian agencies vying to work with it. How that happens – for instance, how to handle disbursements aimed at places in conflict, or without a functioning government – is set to be determined in policies being developed this year.
The FRLD isn’t the only global institution taking climate justice seriously. Last year, the International Court of Justice – the UN’s top court – ruled that governments have legal obligations to respond to climate change. It set a powerful legal precedent for other climate cases to build on – and was another milestone pushed by campaigners and climate-vulnerable nations like Vanuatu.
By the end of 2025, more climate litigation cases were being heard in major European cities, including the Filipino survivors of Super Typhoon Odette taking Shell to court in London. In Switzerland, people from Pari Island, Indonesia made progress in their case against Holcim, a major construction company and carbon emitter.
Next steps: As frustration mounts with the glacial pace of change at the consensus-based UN climate summits, might seemingly long-shot, outsider ideas become more common – outside the COP process?
A critical clue at the otherwise disappointing COP30 came from Colombia and the Netherlands. These vastly different countries, backed by Pacific islands states, announced they would host an international conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels. The April event would do what COPs have consistently failed to do – move forward on phasing out fossil fuels, and seed the idea that societies don’t have to depend on producing pollution.
Meanwhile, Barbados, Kenya, and France are pushing for new ways to generate climate finance, as part of their Global Solidarity Levies Task Force. A carbon levy on global shipping was sunk by the US last year, but the trio is now coordinating eight countries that back a levy on premium airline passengers.
Another hint came from Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley, who recently demanded stronger action on methane emissions. In a clear contrast to COP, she called for a specialised process like the 1987 Montreal Protocol to phase out ozone-depleting substances. This was struck in less than a year by a small coalition of countries.
The lesson for Mottley? “Transformative change can begin with just a handful of pioneering nations,” she wrote, “before spreading worldwide.”
Pooled funds: A quick fix amid deeper cashflow questions
The UN is betting big on pooled funds to rekindle donor support, and to bypass the humanitarian system’s roadblocks.
Why we’re watching: There’s nothing new about pooled funds – we called them a “trend” back in 2023, after all. But relief chief Fletcher is staking his “reset” in part on these collective funding buckets. He convinced the Trump administration to sign on (less than a year removed from kneecapping the aid sector); the State Department says it expects “all US funding of UN humanitarian work” to be channelled through pooled funds eventually. Other government donors also plan to steer more money to pooled funds, including OCHA-run ones, and philanthropies continue to seed-fund more targeted ones. Fletcher has said his goal – there’s no agreement among other aid leaders – is 50% of all response funding going through OCHA’s pooled funds (it’s more like 3% right now). The UN is also tripling down on the idea elsewhere: Pooled funds are a key part of the UN80 reform proposals.
A big shift to UN pooled funds comes with unintended consequences: Who loses out when funding is homogenised and shovelled into a single bucket?
There are strong arguments for pooled funds in general: More money in centralised buckets may better protect humanitarian action from donor impulses, give humanitarians flexibility and room to get money quickly out the door, and quiet the begging bowl ritual of appeals and pledge drives. They can also be a placebo for reforms the system can’t or won’t make. Some pooled funds, for example, help donors give money to local organisations by taking some of the perceived risk (and paperwork) out of direct grants.
But funds run by the UN will entrench money and power in the hands of the UN system, one counter-argument goes. During “reset” talks in 2025, some humanitarians saw Fletcher’s heavy push for pooled funds as a cash grab. Analysts also warn that a big shift to UN pooled funds comes with unintended consequences: Who loses out when funding is homogenised and shovelled into a single bucket?
This underscores the urgency of examining fund governance. Fletcher says the UN country-based pooled funds give a growing share to local groups. But the funds mirror the wider sector’s power imbalances. Local groups may be getting more money than before, but they usually lack an equal say in making decisions and setting priorities. Applying for funding is still complex and short-term, which tends to be a bigger barrier for smaller women-led groups, analysts say. Save the Children announced in December that it would withdraw from OCHA’s country-based funds as a “step toward genuine localisation”. It’s urging other international groups to follow suit.
Next steps: Many grassroots humanitarian groups value pooled funds but stress that the priority should be on locally or regionally run funds – there are many – and ones that specifically target grassroots response. There are new funds focused on mutual aid groups, for example, and funds that support feminist humanitarian action. Funds run by refugee-led networks have been shown to steer more money to refugee-led groups than the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR. The civil society network NEAR created a locally governed Change Fund, which dished out stopgap grants to frontline groups during the US cuts chaos (while most international groups were busy pulling plugs). Civil society groups are developing a Ukrainian-run fund. In Myanmar, local networks are positioning themselves as intermediaries, saying they have more legitimacy and genuine access.
How to end well: Can humanitarians learn to leave?
Humanitarians are experts at surge and scale-up. They’re not so great at the dismount. The 2025 aid cuts showed why transition planning is a life or death issue; hyper-prioritised response plans for 2026 flag more tests to come.
Why we’re watching: Emergency aid programmes ground to a standstill overnight in early 2025 as the Trump administration detonated its aid infrastructure. But the immediate fallout could have been less painful – and the sector’s current crossroads moment less existential – if humanitarian responses planned better for the day they’re not needed.
Under pressure from stop-work orders, international organisations pulled US funding with little notice to frontline partners. Clinics shut overnight, protection services shuttered, mobile health teams in conflict areas were suspended, cash payments stopped, and communities felt abandoned, sometimes with little explanation. Local staff and volunteers were laid off en masse, and those who remained were left to deal with the fallout from communities suddenly cut off. Some international groups stretched reserves or shifted funding to keep their partners afloat, but this was more an exception than the rule.
Grassroots aid exists with or without international support. It wasn’t simply the US cuts that hurt, it was also their immediacy. “If we had warning time… we can find our own sources to try and save people who are really in need,” an aid leader running cross-border operations in Myanmar said at the time.
Have humanitarians learned from the shocks of 2025? The 2026 response plans show decision-makers will be tested again. The numbers suggest some 11 response operations are in transition mode – marked to draw down or eventually phase out an international presence. Several other so-called “neglected” crises may effectively join them, based on meagre funding targets.
The critical questions: Are there clear plans to hand over responsibilities and coordination? Are funding arrangements in place for seamless transitions? Are local humanitarian leaders already making decisions as part of a joint coordination system – as a decade of localisation promises have demanded?
This hasn’t been the case everywhere. One example: Humanitarians debated deprioritising the response in Mozambique as part of the so-called “reset” last year. This caught local leaders by surprise, and an internal audit showed that the UN’s humanitarian aid coordination arm, OCHA, didn’t have an exit strategy – despite high-level guidelines warning that exit plans are “crucial in order to avoid dependence and false expectations”. Humanitarians were grappling with similar dynamics in Cameroon and elsewhere.
The stakes are high. These transitions are driven by funding, not falling humanitarian needs (which are actually escalating in both Mozambique and Cameroon). Failed transitions can leave a vacuum and expose huge gaps, analysts warn – ultimately meaning people don’t get the help they need.
Next steps: Localisation is back in vogue, swirling amid promises of reset reform and the reality of working with less money. Never mind the last decade of incremental progress since the sector codified promises to shift power. But there’s a risk in the international sector preaching localisation, again, as a strategic response in a time of flux. Will quick exits leave local leaders holding the bag, without support or funding? And will they get the blame if things don’t work out?
Meanwhile, a recent high-level panel on social protection – government support services, basically – has some advice for humanitarian planners. It includes: plan transitions from the start, design for existing social protection systems (rather than creating a parallel cash programme, for example), have an exit plan for a clean handover, and “do no harm”.
已Opublikowany: 2026-01-07 15:20:00
źródło: www.thenewhumanitarian.org
