Humanitarian aid suffers the biggest drop in funding ever seen
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the Institute of Studies on Conflicts and Humanitarian Action (IECAH) have taken stock of international and Spanish humanitarian aid over the last year in the report ‘Humanitarian action in 2024-2025: a system in crisis, between cuts, the search for legitimacy and the need for urgent reforms’.
This is the assessment that both entities make each year on international and Spanish humanitarian aid.
Negative data on international humanitarian aid
The analysis, presented in Madrid, highlights a very negative piece of data that unfortunately draws attention: international humanitarian aid has suffered the largest drop in funding ever recorded in the last two years.
However, it is not just a question of figures: the report also analyses and details the serious repercussions that these cuts are having on access to vital medical services, especially in fragile and conflict contexts.
All this in a context in which defence spending is breaking records year after year and the number of people forcibly displaced from their homes is already double what it was ten years ago.
‘Donald Trump's return to the US presidency in 2025 has put the already deteriorating international order in check, where the values and principles of democratic systems are often sidelined by geopolitical and geo-economic interests,’ says Jesús A. Núñez Villaverde, co-director of IECAH.
The report shows how Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan are, once again, the most representative scenarios of prolonged and disproportionate violence, in a context in which the leaders of many of the major powers continue to reinforce their aggressive foreign policies, acting with impunity or showing little capacity to react to flagrant human rights violations.
After decades of sustained growth, from $7.2 billion in 1998 to a peak of $46.1 billion in 2022, the humanitarian system faced its largest ever drop in funding in 2024: almost $5 billion less than in 2023, equivalent to a 10% drop. It has gone from a total of £45.7 billion in 2023 to £41 billion in 2024.
The figures indicate that the trend will continue in 2025, further widening the gap between growing needs and available resources, especially in protracted crisis contexts. The cut in 2025 could reach 34% compared to 2024 and 45% compared to 2023, the year in which the decline had already begun, although it was still very moderate and affected mainly private funds, rather than public funds. In 2024, however, most of the decline comes from public donors (3.5 billion of the 5 billion that has been cut).
Only four of the 20 leading international donors increased their contributions by more than 5% in the last year, with notable increases from Saudi Arabia (60%), the United Kingdom (40%) and, above all, South Korea (247%), although the United Kingdom has already announced drastic cuts for the coming years.
During the period analysed, the Palestinian territories became the largest recipient of funds, with a total of $2.9 billion (51% more than in 2023).
On the other hand, Ukraine suffered a drop of around 25% for the second consecutive year: from $3.7 billion to $2.8 billion, while funding to Syria fell by an even greater proportion: from $3.5 billion in 2023 to $1.7 billion in 2024, i.e. less than half.
Spanish humanitarian aid
Meanwhile, Spain's net Official Development Assistance (ODA) increased by 11.87% in 2024 compared to the previous year, reaching €4.02151 billion. This increase represents a significant recovery after the decline recorded in 2023, resuming the upward trend that, since 2019, had only been interrupted in that same year.
Although net ODA has increased in absolute terms, the relative weight of these funds in relation to gross national income, which remains at 0.25%, continues to be low and as far from the commitment to reach 0.7% as in previous years.
Link to the report ‘Humanitarian action in 2024-2025: a system in crisis, between cuts, the search for legitimacy and the need for urgent reforms’
Source: Médecins Sans Frontières