As the UN turns 80, its crucial humanitarian aid work faces a clouded future

KAKUMA, Kenya (AP) — At a refugee camp in northern Kenya, Aujene Cimanimpaye waits as a hot lunch of lentils and sorghum is ladled out for her and her nine children — all born while she has received United Nations assistance since fleeing her violence-wracked home in Congo in 2007.

“We cannot go back home because people are still being killed,” the 41-year-old said at the Kakuma camp, where the U.N. World Food Program and U.N. refugee agency help support more than 300,000 refugees.

Her family moved from Nakivale Refugee Settlement in neighboring Uganda three years ago to Kenya, now home to more than a million refugees from conflict-hit east African countries.

A few kilometers (miles) away at the Kalobeyei Refugee Settlement, fellow Congolese refugee Bahati Musaba, a mother of five, said that since 2016, “U.N. agencies have supported my children’s education — we get food and water and even medicine,” as well as cash support from WFP to buy food and other basics.

This year, those cash transfers — and many other U.N. aid activities — have stopped, threatening to upend or jeopardize millions of lives.

As the U.N. marks its 80th anniversary this month, its humanitarian agencies are facing one of the greatest crises in their history: The biggest funder — the United States — under the Trump administration and other Western donors have slashed international aid spending. Some want to use the money to build up national defense.

Some U.N. agencies are increasingly pointing fingers at one another as they battle over a shrinking pool of funding, said a diplomat from a top donor country who spoke on condition of anonymity to comment freely about the funding crisis faced by some U.N. agencies.

Such pressures, humanitarian groups say, diminish the pivotal role of the U.N. and its partners in efforts to save millions of lives — by providing tents, food and water to people fleeing unrest in places like Myanmar, Sudan, Syria and Venezuela, or helping stamp out smallpox decades ago.

“It’s the most abrupt upheaval of humanitarian work in the U.N. in my 40 years as a humanitarian worker, by far,” said Jan Egeland, a former U.N. humanitarian aid chief who now heads the Norwegian Refugee Council. “And it will make the gap between exploding needs and contributions to aid work even bigger.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has asked the heads of U.N. agencies to find ways to cut 20% of their staffs, and his office in New York has floated sweeping ideas about reform that could vastly reshape the way the United Nations doles out aid.

Humanitarian workers often face dangers and go where many others don’t — to slums to collect data on emerging viruses or drought-stricken areas to deliver water.

The U.N. says 2024 was the deadliest year for humanitarian personnel on record, mainly due to the war in Gaza. In February, it suspended aid operations in the stronghold of Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who have detained dozens of U.N. and other aid workers.

Proponents say U.N. aid operations have helped millions around the world affected by poverty, illness, conflict, hunger and other troubles.

Critics insist many operations have become bloated, replete with bureaucratic perks and a lack of accountability, and are too distant from in-the-field needs. They say postcolonial Western donations have fostered dependency and corruption, which stifles the ability of countries to develop on their own, while often U.N.-backed aid programs that should be time-specific instead linger for many years with no end in sight.

In the case of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning WFP and the U.N.’s refugee and migration agencies, the U.S. has represented at least 40% of their total budgets, and Trump administration cuts to roughly $60 billion in U.S. foreign assistance have hit hard. Each U.N. agency has been cutting thousands of jobs and revising aid spending.

“It's too brutal what has happened,” said Egeland, alluding to cuts that have jolted the global aid community. “However, it has forced us to make priorities ... what I hope is that we will be able to shift more of our resources to the front lines of humanity and have less people sitting in offices talking about the problem.”

With the U.N. Security Council's divisions over wars in Ukraine and the Middle East hindering its ability to prevent or end conflict in recent years, humanitarian efforts to vaccinate children against polio or shelter and feed refugees have been a bright spot of U.N. activity. That's dimming now.

Aside from the cuts and dangers faced by humanitarian workers, political conflict has at times overshadowed or impeded their work.

UNRWA, the aid agency for Palestinian refugees, has delivered an array of services to millions — food, education, jobs and much more — in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan as well as in the West Bank and Gaza since its founding in 1948.

Israel claims the agency's schools fan antisemitic and anti-Israel sentiment, which the agency denies. Israel says Hamas siphons off U.N. aid in Gaza to profit from it, while U.N. officials insist most aid gets delivered directly to the needy.

“UNRWA is like one of the foundations of your home. If you remove it, everything falls apart,” said Issa Haj Hassan, 38, after a checkup at a small clinic at the Mar Elias Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut.

UNRWA covers his diabetes and blood pressure medication, as well as his wife’s heart medicine. The United States, Israel's top ally, has stopped contributing to UNRWA; it once provided a third of its funding. Earlier this year, Israel banned the aid group, which has strived to continue its work nonetheless.

Ibtisam Salem, a single mother of five in her 50s who shares a small one-room apartment in Beirut with relatives who sleep on the floor, said: “If it wasn’t for UNRWA we would die of starvation. ... They helped build my home, and they give me health care. My children went to their schools.”

Especially when it comes to food and hunger, needs worldwide are growing even as funding to address them shrinks.

“This year, we have estimated around 343 million acutely food insecure people,” said Carl Skau, WFP deputy executive director. “It’s a threefold increase if we compare four years ago. And this year, our funding is dropping 40%. So obviously that’s an equation that doesn’t come together easily.”

Billing itself as the world's largest humanitarian organization, WFP has announced plans to cut about a quarter of its 22,000 staff.

One question is how the United Nations remains relevant as an aid provider when global cooperation is on the outs, and national self-interest and self-defense are on the upswing.

The United Nations is not alone: Many of its aid partners are feeling the pinch. Groups like GAVI, which tries to ensure fair distribution of vaccines around the world, and the Global Fund, which spends billions each year to help battle HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, have been hit by Trump administration cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Some private-sector, government-backed groups also are cropping up, including the divisive Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has been providing some food to Palestinians. But violence has erupted as crowds try to reach the distribution sites.

No private-sector donor or well-heeled country — China and oil-rich Gulf states are often mentioned by aid groups — have filled the significant gaps from shrinking U.S. and other Western spending.

The future of U.N. aid, experts say, will rest where it belongs — with the world body's 193 member countries.

“We need to take that debate back into our countries, into our capitals, because it is there that you either empower the U.N. to act and succeed — or you paralyze it,” said Achim Steiner, administrator of the U.N. Development Program.

Chehayeb reported from Beirut and Keaten from Geneva. Associated Press writer Melina Walling in Hamburg, Germany, contributed to this report.

A Palestinian woman carries water containers through an alley decorated with Palestinian flags and posters marking the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, in the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. The Arabic writing on the poster reads, "76 years of injustice, enough." (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

A woman walks through a narrow alley in the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Students play in the courtyard of a primary school run by UNRWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Cooked sorghum dried by the UN tents hosting refugees at the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Turkana County, Kenya, Wednesday, June 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Kasuku)

Aujene Cimanimpaye, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, poses for a photograph at the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Turkana County, Kenya, Wednesday, June 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Kasuku)

A doctor consults with a woman and her child at a medical center run by UNRWA in the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. Posters in Arabic promote UNRWA's mental health and medical services for Palestinian refugees. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

A Palestinian patient undergoes an eye examination at a medical center run by UNRWA in the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Aujene Cimanimpaye, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, brings lunch to her family at the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Turkana County, Kenya, Wednesday, June 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Kasuku)

Aujene Cimanimpaye, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, gives food to her family at the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Turkana County, Kenya, Wednesday, June 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Kasuku)

Ibtisam Salem, a 51-year-old Palestinian refugee and single mother, stands at the entrance of her home in the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. She lives in a one-bedroom apartment shared with extended family members. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Bahati Musaba, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, poses for a photograph at the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Turkana County, Kenya, Wednesday, June 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Kasuku)

Students in an English class at a primary school run by UNRWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

A Ukrainian drone strike killed one person and wounded three others in the Russian city of Voronezh, local officials said Sunday.

A young woman died overnight in a hospital intensive care unit after debris from a drone fell on a house during the attack on Saturday, regional Gov. Alexander Gusev said on Telegram.

Three other people were wounded and more than 10 apartment buildings, private houses and a high school were damaged, he said, adding that air defenses shot down 17 drones over Voronezh. The city is home to just over 1 million people and lies some 250 kilometers (155 miles) from the Ukrainian border.

The attack came the day after Russia bombarded Ukraine with hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles overnight into Friday, killing at least four people in the capital Kyiv, according to Ukrainian officials.

For only the second time in the nearly four-year war, Russia used a powerful new hypersonic missile that struck western Ukraine in a clear warning to Kyiv and NATO.

The intense barrage and the launch of the nuclear-capable Oreshnik missile followed reports of major progress in talks between Ukraine and its allies on how to defend the country from further aggression by Moscow if a U.S.-led peace deal is struck.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday in his nightly address that Ukrainian negotiators “continue to communicate with the American side.”

Chief negotiator Rustem Umerov was in contact with U.S. partners Saturday, he said.

Separately, Ukraine’s General Staff said Russia targeted Ukraine with 154 drones overnight into Sunday and 125 were shot down.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

This photo provided by the Ukrainian Security Service on Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, shows a fragment believed to be a part of a Russian Oreshnik intermediate range hypersonic ballistic missile that hit the Lviv region. (Ukrainian Security Service via AP)

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, second left, listens to British Defense Secretary John Healey during their meeting in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Danylo Antoniuk)