UN says aid cuts causing millions of refugees ‘unnecessary pain’

A wave of “drastic, irresponsible” aid cuts this year has inflicted unnecessary pain on refugees, who are being vilified while their suffering is exploited by traffickers and politicians, the United Nations said on Monday.

Outgoing UN refugees chief Filippo Grandi said this year had been a perfect storm of successive crises for the world’s forcibly displaced people, who were estimated to number 117.3 million people in mid-2025.

He condemned the “unending atrocities” committed in Sudan, Ukraine, Gaza and Myanmar, but also the “sudden, drastic, irresponsible and short-sighted collapse of foreign assistance … inflicting so much unnecessary pain in its wake”.

The number of people forcibly displaced worldwide has almost doubled in the last decade, but funding for international aid has slumped, not least after the return of US President Donald Trump to the White House.

Opening a biennial Global Refugee Forum Progress Review in Geneva, Grandi condemned a global context “in which hate is allowed to increasingly spread racist divisions”.

This year has been one where “refugees were frequently vilified, scapegoated in so many places, with their suffering cynically used by traffickers for profit, and their situation by politicians to gain votes”, said Grandi, head of the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.

  

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