A survey across 52 countries found one in five women’s organizations expect to shut down within a year as aid budgets contract sharply, including record declines in global development assistance, UN Women said.
Global aid cuts have left at least one million women and girls without humanitarian and other critical support over the past 18 months, UN Women said on Friday, highlighting the strain on frontline groups as donor funding retreats. The agency said demand has risen sharply since January 2025, when the Trump administration in the United States, the largest U.N. donor, took office and began cutting foreign aid, yet nearly 90% of surveyed organizations said they can no longer meet current levels of need. UN Women said it spoke to 855 women’s organizations in 52 countries, and 84% reported increased needs since January 2025. One in five said they expect to shut down temporarily or permanently within the next year. Sofia Calltorp, UN Women’s chief of humanitarian action, said the one million figure is only “the tip of the iceberg” and warned that funding withdrawals are hitting survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, displaced mothers, girls forced from school and vulnerable communities. The agency said conflict-related sexual violence doubled last year. It also pointed to an OECD report showing development assistance fell by nearly a quarter last year to $174 billion, the largest annual contraction on record. The funding squeeze has already pushed many U.N. agencies to cut thousands of jobs and scale back aid programs, while the United Nations is also considering, under its UN80 reform process, a possible merger of UN Women with UNFPA.