The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is laying off a third of its global workforce. They recently announced plans to lay off about 500 of their employees, which is 20% of their employees. OCHA is already facing a funding gap of almost $60 million for 2025. This is against a backdrop of facing skyrocketing global humanitarian needs.
In a recent letter to staff, OCHA’s director, Tom Fletcher, called the impending changes “draconian cuts.” He stressed how deeply the organization cares about its mission even as he recognized that the hard truths that have driven these layoffs are needed. The full letter is now available on OCHA’s website. It describes the effects of increasing resource scarcity on those operations, including the United States, Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon.
Retrenchments were scheduled under OCHA’s plans for nine countries, including Cameroon, Colombia, Eritrea, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. These adjustments are crucial as the organization seeks to manage its limited funding effectively while still addressing urgent humanitarian needs worldwide.
Fletcher stated, “We believe passionately in what we do, but we cannot continue to do it all.” His remarks are indicative of the mood inside OCHA as it faces an increasingly brutal fiscal reality. He further remarked on the dire circumstances faced by the humanitarian community, noting, “The humanitarian community was already underfunded, overstretched and literally, under attack. Now, we face a wave of brutal cuts.”
OCHA has a total staff complement of 2,600 staff deployed in more than 60 countries. They are indispensable in making sure that humanitarian responses work for the millions of people affected by crises. With the continued funding crisis, painful choices have forced decisions about mission versus operational capacity.
The organization’s cuts couldn’t come at a worse moment, as needs worldwide are becoming more desperate. Both the ravages of conflicts and natural disasters continue to force more and more people from their homes and into urgent humanitarian need. Sadly, OCHA has difficulty delivering the required support thanks to ongoing underfunding.
