OCHA's 2025 in review

Soaring needs, sustained conflicts and brutal funding cuts sharply reduced the humanitarian system’s ability to help many people in need this year.

In response, the global aid system – led by the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator and partners – launched the Humanitarian Reset, a system-wide shift to focus on the most urgent, life-saving needs across all emergencies. It meant prioritizing 114.4 million of the 178.7 million people in need in 2025, and appealing for $29.1 billion of the $44 billion originally required.

Backed by OCHA, the Reset is reshaping how the world responds, based on four priorities: Defining where the priorities are; delivering aid more efficiently, devolving power to local responders, and defending humanitarian space.

And we are seeing the results. In Mozambique, Syria and Venezuela, local partners have already delivered more than half of the humanitarian response. In countries the Democratic Republic of the Congo, operations are being determined based on community feedback. And in crises such as Yemen, cash and voucher assistance has expanded.

Despite the lowest funding levels since 2016 – and despite programme closures, office drawdowns and the loss of many staff – we still reached nearly 98 million people with aid this year. 

OCHA also led the scale-up of aid delivery during two ceasefires. Within six weeks of the January ceasefire, OCHA’s access negotiations and fundraising helped aid to reach nearly everyone in need in Gaza.  

During the October ceasefire, OCHA and its partners rolled out a 60-day plan to expand aid in areas vacated by Israeli forces, boosting food deliveries and expanding life-saving services.  

Cash assistance is now one of the fastest tools to support families. More than 1.2 million people – or more than half the population of Gaza – received cash in the January ceasefire, while, to date, nearly 700,000 people have been reached with cash so far in the latest ceasefire. 

As needs soared, conflict intensified, particularly across the regions of Darfur and Kordofan, and funding plummeted, OCHA remained at the centre of efforts to scale up the response and keep global attention on the people facing the most acute threats.  

By the end of October, 16.8 million people across the country had been reached with at least one form of humanitarian assistance. Gaps remain, but 2025 saw significant steps to strengthen the UN presence in Darfur.  

OCHA’s sustained advocacy helped to unlock progress on visas and internal travel authorizations, allowing more aid workers to enter and move within the country. 

In response to the dramatic changes in Syria, OCHA led a major reorientation of one of the world’s largest humanitarian responses, streamlining all aid delivery hubs under a unified system reporting to Damascus.  

This, along with adjustments to the cross-border operation from Türkiye, enabled the UN and its partners to reach 3.4 million people per month with aid – a 25 per cent increase from 2024, despite a steep drop in funding. 

OCHA continued to put local and national organizations at the heart of humanitarian action.  

More than two thirds of the Ukraine Humanitarian Fund went to national NGOs, while the Yemen Humanitarian Fund allocated more than 60 per cent of its resources to local partners helping communities hardest hit by brutal funding cuts. 

Local and national NGOs delivered around half of all assistance in Mozambique and Venezuela. 

The Sudan Humanitarian Fund expanded its support to local partners, including mutual aid groups such as emergency response rooms and community networks.  

Globally, and in line with the objectives of the Humanitarian Reset, Country-Based Pooled Funds (CBPFs) allocated 55 per cent of their funding – the highest proportion ever – to local and national NGOs, including 17 per cent to local women's organizations.  

Dozens of OCHA’s disaster experts mobilized across three continents to help Governments respond to environmental disasters, earthquakes and cyclones.   

When a 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck Myanmar in March, a 31-member team from the UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) team – including experts from Governments, UN agencies and partners organizations – deployed within hours to coordinate the response.  

In Ecuador, a team backed the UN Environment Programme/OCHA Joint Environment Unit after a massive crude oil spill threatened communities and ecosystems. 

UNDAC also helped deliver life-saving assistance after Hurricane Melissa devastated Jamaica in October. And when Tropical Cyclone Ditwah triggered severe floods in Sri Lanka the following month, UNDAC teams supported the Government’s response.

The global humanitarian system set new records in acting before disasters struck, helping protect millions of people from extreme weather and deadly disease outbreaks. 

When Tropical Cyclone Fung-wong threatened the Philippines, the OCHA-managed UN Global Emergency Fund (CERF) released $6 million within two minutes of the alert to rapidly help more than 400,000 people. 

Ahead of Hurricane Melissa, early action helped 270,000 people in Cuba and Haiti within four days of the storm’s landfall. An additional CERF allocation helped contain a major cholera outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

OCHA’s pooled funds supported local partners ahead of extreme weather events in Afghanistan and Nigeria. 

By year’s end, they helped more than 2.5 million people in nine countries with $50 million released before crises hit. 

CERF’s Climate Action Account also provided $9.5 million in eight countries to support life-saving action and help communities build resilience to climate shocks. 

Severe funding cuts forced aid organizations to make agonizing choices on whose lives to save.  

Building on the Humanitarian Reset, OCHA helped its partners to focus limited resources on where needs were most severe and prioritize assistance for 114.4 million people.  

An interactive dashboard, the first of its kind, made this possible by bringing together global data on severity, needs, planned response and funding — helping partners reach 98 million people. 

OCHA helped to scale up cash and voucher assistance worldwide — from 4 crises in 2022 to 20 crises in 2025.  

As the Yemen crisis deepened, more than 320,000 people had received multipurpose cash assistance by August. And just days after the earthquake in Myanmar, more than $5.8 million had been distributed through 13 organizations, supporting more than 271,000 people.  

Cash is now increasingly used to help people prepare before disasters hit. In Haiti, nearly 50,000 people received $100 before Hurricane Melissa’s landfall, allowing them to buy food, medicine and other essentials ahead of the storm.