CAIRO (AP) — The World Food Program and the United Nations refugee agency will slash jobs because of funding cuts, mainly from the United States, officials told The Associated Press on Tuesday, warning the reductions will severely affect aid programs worldwide.
The WFP, also a United Nations organization, is expected to cut up to 30% of its staff. The head of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said it would downsize its headquarters and regional offices to reduce costs by 30% and cut senior-level positions by 50%.
That’s according to internal memos obtained by The AP and verified by two U.N. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the internal personnel decisions.
One WFP official called the cuts “the most massive” seen by the agency in the past 25 years, and that as a result, operations will disappear or be downsized.
The cuts to the U.N. agencies underscore the impact of President Donald Trump’s decision to pull back the U.S. from its position as the world’s single largest aid donor. Trump has given billionaire ally Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency power to redo the scale of the federal government, with a focus on slashing foreign assistance. Even before the administration’s move, many donor nations had reduced humanitarian spending, and U.N. agencies struggled to reach funding goals.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “deeply troubled by the drastic funding reduction.”
“The heads of our humanitarian agencies are being forced to take impossibly painful decisions as budget cuts have an immediate and often deadly impact on the world’s most vulnerable,” Dujarric said in a statement to The AP. “We understand the pressures on national budgets faced by governments, but these cuts come at a time when military spending again hits record levels.”
World Food Program
The WFP, the world’s largest humanitarian organization, received 46% of its funding from the United States in 2024.
Asked about the planned cuts, the organization said in a statement that “in this challenging donor environment, WFP will prioritize its limited resources on vital programs that bring urgently needed food assistance to the 343 million people struggling with hunger and increasingly facing starvation.”
The internal memo said personnel cuts will “impact all geographies, divisions and levels” in the agency. It suggested further downsizing may be needed and said the agency will review its “portfolio of programs.”
U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees
The U.N.’s top refugee agency provides help to some 43.7 million refugees worldwide, along with others among the 122 million people driven from their homes by conflicts and natural disasters.
It said a statement that the agency will “have to significantly reduce our workforce,” including downsizing the headquarters and regional offices. UNHCR said some country offices will be closed, but it did not give an immediate figure of how many staff will be cut.
“The impact of this funding crunch on refugees’ lives is already devastating and will get far worse,” the agency said. Programs providing food, clean water, medicines, emergency shelter and other services “will reduce or stop.”
For example, it said, reduced funding will cut access to clean water for at least half a million displaced people in Sudan, increasing the risk of cholera and other disease outbreaks.
It also will hurt efforts to house and provide schooling for refugees from Sudan in South Sudan, Chad and Uganda. It warned that the lack of facilities in host countries will push more refugees to attempt dangerous crossings to Europe.
In the April 23 email to staff, the UNHCR chief said the headquarters and regional offices will be downsized to cut costs by 30%. It said senior-level positions will be capped to bring a 50% reduction.
The cuts “will affect our operations, the size of our organization, and, most worryingly, the very people we are called to protect,” it said. “It is critical that we prioritize, as we always have, the well-being and safety of refugees and of displaced and stateless people.”
UNHCR’s office in Lebanon — which is home to some 1 million refugees from Syria — is only 15% funded, its spokesperson Lisa Abou Khaled said.
This month, it had to stop cash assistance to 347,000 refugees — two-thirds of the number it previously helped — and funding for the remaining 200,000 will last only through June, she said. It also halted primary health services for some 40,000 refugees.
International Organization for Migration
The U.N. agency said last month that it had been hit by a 30% decrease in funding for the year, mainly because of U.S. cuts. It said it was ending programs that affect 6,000 personnel and reducing its staff at headquarters by 20%.
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Associated Press writers Sarah El Deeb in Beirut, Lee Keath in Cairo and Farnoush Amiri at the United Nations contributed to this report.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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