Humanitarian aid contributions and recipients worldwide in 2025

The year 2025 was a defining year for humanitarian aid worldwide. A total of only USD 25.89 billion in funds was received. Although the United States remained the largest donor with nearly USD 3.7 billion (14.2% of all funds), it gave USD 10.5 billion less than at the same time last year. The other top 10 donors included the European Commission (12.3%), Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Japan, Sweden and Canada. The 10 largest donors together contributed approximately USD 19 billion, which corresponds to almost 72% of the total amount. In addition to the US, other traditional top donor countries also cut their funding, including France, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The drastic cuts forced humanitarian organisations to significantly reduce their aid to people in crisis situations. Programmes were suspended, offices closed and thousands of employees laid off. The majority of the funds went to the occupied Palestinian territories. Nevertheless, this only covered 61% of the corresponding needs, despite the officially declared famine. Other recipient countries in the top 10 included Syria, Sudan, Ukraine, Yemen, Afghanistan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Lebanon. The biggest humanitarian crisis in 2025 was in Sudan, where 30.4 million people (out of a total population of 46.8 million) needed humanitarian aid. Here too, famine was declared in parts of the country last year. However, due to funding cuts, only 39% of the humanitarian aid plan was covered.