21 March 2025
Spokespersons for UNICEF and UNHCR in Geneva warned that
the liquidity crunch has jeopardized lifesaving work,
including progress in reducing child mortality, which has
fallen by 60 per cent since 1990.
By slashing severe
acute malnutrition by one-third since 2000, UNICEF’s
efforts have kept 55 million children alive, through simple
interventions, it insisted.
“There are ways in which
we can still be optimistic if we know that we can do it,”
said Kitty van der Heijden, UNICEF’s Deputy Executive
Director said from Abuja, Nigeria.
But that work can
only get done with the support of a “conveyor belt” of
partners in government, philanthropy, and the private
sector.
Donors are essential to delivering lifesaving
assistance to children and mothers worldwide, Ms. Van der
Heijden insisted: “We never do this
alone.”
Advances being rolled back
But these
gains are now at risk of being rolled back by recent
pullouts, she warned, adding that the issue does not lie
with a single benefactor.
“It is the fact that it’s
a cumulative set of donors that are doing this. That really
risks rolling back that progress,” she
said.
“These decisions have impacts on real
children, real lives every day in the here and
now.”
Due to funding shortages, around
1.3 million children could lose access to life-saving
support and ready-to-use therapeutic foods this year in
Nigeria and Ethiopia.
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In 2025, some 213
million children in 146 countries will need lifesaving
humanitarian support, according to the UNICEF
spokesperson.
Supply chain break down
In the
Afar region of northeast Ethiopia, UNICEF runs 30 mobile
clinics – which Ms. van der Heijden visited last week and
described as a “sheet under a shaded tree”.
The
facilities, aimed at supporting impoverished pastoralist
communities that are on the move, provide pregnant and
lactating mothers as well as children with the “bare
minimum”, she said, including supplementary vitamin A,
iron deficiency, malnutrition and malaria
treatments.
Only seven out of these 30 clinics remain,
with the others shut by the wave of financial
cutbacks.
“Without new funding, we will run out of
our supply chain by May,” she said. “And that means that
70,000 children in Ethiopia depend on this type of treatment
cannot be served.”
Similarly, in Nigeria, UNICEF
could run out of supplies between this month and
May.
Beyond treatment, prevention
Investing in
prevention, nutrient supplementation and early screenings is
also crucial to preventing more unnecessary
deaths.
“It’s not just about the treatment. We have
to be able to prevent it getting to this
stage.”
Earlier this week, Ms. van der Heijden
visited a Nigerian hospital and saw a child so malnourished
that his skin was peeling off.
“That’s the level of
malnutrition that we’re seeing here,” she said, stressing
the importance of prevention.
“As needs
are rising, we need the global community to step up to the
plate, to rise to the occasion, to keep investing in the art
of the possible,” Ms. Van der Heijden stressed, adding
that UNICEF will not retreat.
“All over
the world, the price is the same. It’s children that bear
the brunt of decisions in capitals.”
Failing the
children
“If you’re holding a child that is about to
die of a totally preventable, treatable disease. It is
nothing short of heartbreaking,” said Ms. van der Heijden.
“We should not allow the global community to fail children
in this way.”
The severe financial crisis underway
is also posing a security risk to staff, hampering
humanitarians’ ability to deliver.
UNHCR downsizing
operations
Finding itself in a similar position,
UNHCR has also announced cuts to operations and
programmes.
It is the latest agency to face painful
cutbacks in the field and at headquarters following the
announcement of a drastic drawdown in funding from the
United States Government.
“The biggest concern that we
have is, of course, in all of this for refugees, for the
displaced, they will be feeling the brunt of these cuts,”
said Matthew Saltmarsh, a spokesperson for UNHCR.
Mr.
Saltmarsh said the agency was conducting a review to
determine how many staff would have to be let
go.
UNHCR has already has to halt multiple initiatives
including in South Sudan, Bangladesh and Europe, and closed
offices in countries like Türkiye.
In Ethiopia, the
organization has suspended operations at a safehouse for
women facing death threats, Mr. Saltmarsh said.
“In
South Sudan, only 25 per cent of the dedicated spaces
supported by UNHCR for women and girls at risk of violence
are currently operational. That has left some 80,000 people
without access to services like emergency psychosocial
support and legal and medical
assistance.”
