When I stepped into this role last year, I warned that humanitarians were over-stretched, under-funded and under attack. Few of us, however, imagined how much worse it would become.
In 2025, our colleagues on the front lines of crises were killed, detained and injured, while our funding plummeted below levels last seen in 2016, forcing us to shutter, suspend and stop services for communities in crisis. For millions of people, 2025 was the year that the last lifeline available to them was snapped: health centers closed, food rations cut, nutrition outreach halted, protection services ceased, cash payments stopped, water deliveries ended, and shelters went unrepaired. And all this while communities were exposed to conflict – including atrocities – and climate emergencies, and as two famines unfolded simultaneously—for the first time in recorded history—in the Occupied Palestine Territory and Sudan.
This is a time of brutality, impunity and indifference.
And yet, amid these extremes, humanitarians refused to relent. I saw this first-hand from Kandahar to Kyiv, from Tawila to Gaza, and from Port-au-Prince to the Kivus: communities stepping-up to support one another in times of crisis; local and national organizations—especially those led by women, people with disabilities and displaced people—rising to assist the villages, towns and cities they know best; and international partners supporting these efforts with their supply chains, expertise, capacity and advocacy. In 2025, together, we reached nearly 98 million people worldwide.
This year’s Global Humanitarian Overview (GHO) is the latest diagnosis of the staggering scale of global suffering, the challenges we face in responding, the case for moral imagination and moral ambition.
It is our clarion call to the world, our plan—laser focused, stripped back, costed, rooted in solidarity but also reform, evidence and efficiency—to save 87 million lives in 2026
Faced with funding cuts without historic precedent, we have regrouped and refocused, but we have not relented. The GHO zooms in on the most life-threatening needs of people who have been hardest hit by crises, and presents our road map to respond. We are clear about what we should be doing and should be funded to do. We are also clear on our most urgent priorities should the funds we receive not be enough.
As we launch GHO 2026, I urge the global community—individuals, companies and governments—to come together to back this effort. We are asking for just a fraction of global expenditure to be directed to saving millions of lives. This is about our collective priorities as humanity.
This groundswell of financial support must be paired with decisive political action from the international community to tackle the root causes of the crises we are responding to. No amount of aid can stop wars or turn back the climate crisis. And no amount of anger can bring back the civilians – including our own colleagues – killed ruthlessly in war. The world must stand unequivocally behind international law, demand accountability for violations and uphold our collective obligations to protect civilians and humanitarian assistance.
We will continue to do our part, but we need others to do theirs. We need protection for our work, we need energetic peacemaking, and we need $23 billion. If the world can spend $2.7 trillion on defence last year, surely it can spend less than 1 per cent of that on helping the most vulnerable?
What’s even more shocking? The GHO could be fully funded if the global top 10 per cent of earners (those making $100,000 or more annually) gave just 20 cents a day.
That’s why this plan is a call to action for a generation of leaders and citizens—armed with solidarity, curiosity and empathy—to be a movement of good ancestors.
Because failure to act betrays one cruel fact: This is not a resource problem—it’s a priority problem.
2026 must be the year that humanity chooses solidarity over indifference—millions of lives depend on it.
Tom Fletcher
Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator