Whether it knows it or not, the humanitarian system is in a struggle to stake its relevance.
Faith in multilateralism has fractured, if it ever existed at all. Last year, we said that humanitarians have a trust problem; this has deepened over the last 12 months amid double standards on Gaza, unmet promises, and imbalanced power and influence.
The challenge in 2025 and beyond will be for humanitarians to redefine what they do and why it matters. Here are five humanitarian policy trends that could play a role. There are obstacles to aid and disruptions to the system – but also opportunities for change.
Efficiency and value: The next steps in the scramble for money
Don’t be surprised if “efficiency” and “value for money” become buzzwords in 2025 as humanitarian leaders jostle for ways to cover rising needs with flat funding – and to defend against the coming criticism from aid-sceptics who hold growing influence, public platforms, and control of donor budgets.
Why we’re watching: Humanitarians begin another year of scrimping, scraping, and squeezing on response plans in 2025 as big government donors slash budgets. Cuts have been underway for a couple of years, and there’s more pressure to come as Donald Trump’s volatile new administration takes shape in the US.
Terms like “prioritisation” and “boundary setting” have seeped into the humanitarian glossary as planners try to draw a line around what emergency aid can do. Corporate “restructuring” pervades at aid agencies big and small.
This year’s efficiency drive began before many had a chance to ditch their 2024 calendars. New UN relief chief Tom Fletcher pulled on his baby blue gilet in November with promises to make the system “leaner and faster”. An early anti-bureaucracy blitz has come back with recommendations that would revamp humanitarian coordination (and maybe retire a few acronyms).
Of course, every new leader hits the ground promising change. Other factors suggest efficiency and value are themes that will simmer through this humanitarian year. The US right-wing playbook, Project 2025, is peppered with lines on cost-effectiveness, slashing waste, and bypassing aid giants. Tech oligarch and Trump appointee Elon Musk has questioned the value of US foreign aid (in between musing on European politics). It’s not simply nativist ideology. Other government donors are pushing for the sector to quantify its value for money.
Humanitarians are rarely asked to prove their cost-effectiveness – can you put a price tag on saving lives, some might ask – and it’s unclear what metric they’d even use. But analysts say value for money will be part of the new reality: Today’s politicised aid and vastly underfunded responses show that dire need alone doesn’t convince donors to open their wallets.
Next steps: In the meantime, painful decisions must be made when funding is tight. This year’s $47 billion in UN-led response plans has been prioritised and fenced off to such a “ruthless” degree that millions of people who need aid likely aren’t counted at all.
More cuts are coming, and the impacts will be unequal: Donors will earmark funds for favoured emergencies, communities in areas run by authorities estranged from Western governments will be under-served, and services for women and girls will bear the brunt all around.
Against this backdrop, many humanitarians will welcome the HQ-level efficiency push in the short term. After all, who hasn’t attended a meeting that should have been an email? But coordinating thousands of aid groups, billions of dollars, and countless stakeholders is a messy business; some structure serves a purpose. Genuine community consultations, protection against sexual exploitation and abuse, and reform pacts like the Grand Bargain require meetings and paperwork that some critics might be eager to lose.
Figuring out value for money is easier said than done as well. Properly supporting your staff isn’t cheap (more on that below), and cost incentives are a double-edged sword. Still, local humanitarian groups will be ready with stats: In Ukraine, one study found, local intermediaries are 32% more cost-efficient than their international counterparts.
The Trump effect: Volatility, multiplied
The return of Trump personifies the political trend of disruption and unpredictability. It echoes beyond US borders: Inward-looking leaders with populist narratives are surging, and international cooperation, aid, and climate budgets will be easy targets.
Why we’re watching: Trump’s re-election isn’t the only political plot twist that underscores the trend toward instability among the humanitarian system’s biggest financial backers. The governments of France and Germany collapsed weeks after the US election. Germany votes in February, and the far-right, anti-immigrant (and Musk-boosted) Alternative für Deutschland party is second in recent polling. In Norway, the world’s most generous per capita humanitarian donor, the right-wing Progress Party is rising in the polls ahead of September elections, and has previously pushed for aid cuts. Canadians will also vote in 2025, and the presumed front-runner has railed against what he calls “wasteful foreign aid” and promised to boost military spending. If a rising tide lifts all boats, then a second Trump term may float more “me first” policies elsewhere.
The era of disruption is a big, discombobulating challenge – particularly for a highly technocratic aid sector that professionalised during a time of relative political stability, and values ever scarcer predictability. Policy conversations at headquarters or at international summits often seem divorced from the bleak realities of conflicts and crises. Perhaps Trump’s return will change that. The US is the world’s largest aid donor by volume, making up major chunks of the budgets of UN agencies and big NGOs. Trump’s administration is likely to magnify the trend of politicised aid spending: Humanitarian experts worry about what will be cut from big aid agencies, sexual and reproductive health, climate finance, or any other entity or area that receives Trump’s ire. The consequences could be worse this time around, as cash-strapped donor governments who offset earlier US cuts, like the UK and Germany, have already slashed budgets.
But it's not just a money problem. A controversial bill labelled “the non-profit killer” wound its way through the US Congress last year. Critics say it would have given the president powers to strip charities of their non-profit status to target Muslim groups and those seen as supporting Palestinian rights. The bill ran out of runway, but could be reintroduced with a Republican-controlled House and Senate in 2025. Trump previously tried to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization during the COVID-19 pandemic, and from the Paris Agreement on climate change, and legislated against migrants and Muslims. Unpredictability is Trump’s calling card. He might do all of the above, or something entirely different. The added variable for the humanitarian sector this year is whether Trump’s actions embolden others to do the same – whether it be aid cuts, multilateral non-cooperation, or anti-NGO laws.
Next steps: Some might think that at least with Trump, the increasingly unconvincing mask of US global leadership is finally off: What you see is what you get. For the most optimistic, his disruptions could force through change: Project 2025, the influential conservative policy paper, is hostile to the existing US-supported aid system but urges support for “local partners”. Localisation stripped of its equity and decolonisation underpinnings may miss the point, but would a rebalancing of aid funding be a positive shift on its own? Perhaps Trump 2.0 forces the sector to finally diversify its funding base. Aid groups would be a lot less threatened by Trump or others like him if one government wasn’t responsible for 30-40% of humanitarian funding.
Still, America is not the world, nor the only government whose decisions matter. From heavyweights like France backing solidarity levies to raise climate finance, middle powers like South Africa taking Israel to the International Court of Justice, to tiny Vanuatu seeking to strengthen international law on climate obligations, governments are not waiting for the nod from Washington to try to make change happen.
Duty of care: Will rising violence against aid workers lead to change?
Soaring aid worker killings will challenge a system that is often accused of treating its frontline staff as replaceable.
Why we’re watching: At least 320 aid workers were attacked and killed in 2024. The vast majority are local staff. Israel’s indiscriminate assault on civilians in Gaza fuelled this second straight year of record aid killings, but it’s a global problem. Analysts say the rise is a fundamental shift rather than a short-term blip, driven by the disregard for humanitarian laws and norms, and impunity from repercussions.
As attacks, killings, and threats mount, there will be fresh questions about the aid sector’s shortcomings and double standards when it comes to protecting and supporting staff. Aid groups send staff and contractors to the front lines, but are they fulfilling their duty-of-care obligations? There’s growing attention and progress, but advocates for improving duty of care say aid groups grapple with ensuring proper risk protocols and safety measures across the board, and with adequate support after attacks and in the long recovery phase that may follow. And that’s the sector’s biggest, most well-funded agencies…
The uncomfortable reality is that many local staff – responsible for most frontline aid – don’t benefit from the same protections or support as their international counterparts. Local organisations also take on the lion’s share of risk but not the resources to keep their staff safe. Fewer than half of staff in local and national NGOs had evacuation plans, accident insurance, security, or risk monitoring, according to a recent study on safety and risk. “Frontline workers,” wrote Sudhanshu Shekhar Singh, head of the report’s Delhi-based co-publisher, Humanitarian Aid International, “are treated as dispensable human resources.”
Next steps: What’s shifting? Change rarely happens without accountability. A pivotal case brought against the Norwegian Refugee Council in 2015 by a kidnapped aid worker, Steve Dennis, forced agencies to recognise their duty-of-care obligations. This year, a German court case is expected to begin against CADUS e.V., an organisation accused of taking excessive risks and failing to uphold its duty of care to an aid worker who was kidnapped and tortured in Syria.
Advocates say mental health support, as always, is a missing link. The study on frontline staff recommends that organisations create a bill of rights that would underline “minimum standards for treatment, compensation, well-being, and safety”. A new programme, Protect Aid Workers, offers quick grants and legal support for NGO staff.
The broader issue of aid worker attacks is on the Security Council agenda, in the form of an adopted resolution calling for solutions (accountability for those who kill, and better support for survivors are among the recommendations). But there’s an elephant in the room: The humanitarian sector’s biggest government funders are also staunch supporters of Israel – responsible for the majority of aid worker killings in the last two years. There’s no aid policy fix for impunity.
Mutual aid: A new spotlight on the oldest form of aid
It seems everyone wants to talk about Sudan’s emergency response rooms these days. Philanthropists announced plans to fund the grassroots volunteer groups on a high-profile stage in New York. UN relief chief Fletcher made one of his first calls to an ERR volunteer. There were even Nobel Peace Prize whispers. Supporters say embracing mutual aid could help reshape the lumbering humanitarian system. But will the money – and a meaningful policy shift – materialise in 2025, or is it just talk?
Why we’re watching: First things first: There’s nothing new about mutual aid. Neighbours are always the first to help neighbours – from tsunami response brigades in Indonesia and youth collectives in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to neighbourhood groups pooling resources in Burkina Faso and soup kitchens in Gaza, or to the countless community groups that stepped up across the globe during the COVID-19 pandemic. Often, they’re far more organised and professional than the conventional humanitarian system tends to acknowledge. What may be shifting is that the international system has been forced to take notice in Sudan, where famine has flared amid civil war, alongside signs of war crimes and genocide.
Half the population needs aid and warring parties have imposed significant blocks to accessing it. Sudan’s self-organised ERRs are well-coordinated and have impressive reach, in part due to their origin story emerging from neighbourhood resistance committees. They deliver support in areas where the international system has failed, and have created community accountability systems and women’s response rooms. Behind the scenes, some humanitarians are helping the ERRs speak “internationalese” to navigate the aid funding machinery – and helping big global players steer around their own regulations to shake loose funding.
Next steps: For all the eagerness to namedrop mutual aid, actual support has been modest and slow to arrive. Several philanthropic organisations announced $2 million in funding for ERRs in September. But a similar amount was promised (and swiftly not delivered) by aid organisations a year earlier. And it’s a generous rounding error compared to this year’s $4.2 billion UN-backed response plan for Sudan.
Volunteers increasingly find themselves under attack; dozens have died. Is the global system able or willing to help mutual aid groups protect themselves? The ERRs must also decide how formally they want to engage; the international system’s sheer size and bureaucracy tends to mould others in its image, rather than bend to provide what communities need.
This begs a question: Is the international system interested in Sudan’s ERRs because it believes their community aid model is transformative and wants to help – or because it wants a piece of their credibility and access? There are more than a few parallels to the aid sector’s long-stalled localisation agenda, where promises trump progress, and big aid groups take as much as they give.
Climate: Humanitarians try to chart their climate path
Humanitarians want a piece of the climate cash pie. But they say they’re bringing something to the table, too.
Why we’re watching: The climate crisis accelerates the already sizable pressures on humanitarian emergencies. This continues to push humanitarians to rethink how they work, and – in an era of tight aid budgets – eye the potential of climate finance.
Discussions at the COP29 climate summit showed how humanitarian and climate policy areas are becoming increasingly interconnected (or tangled): Humanitarians advocated for a new climate finance target, eyed so-called loss and damage funding as a way to help displaced people, and pitched their skills in preemptive responses to climate disasters. While concerns of a cash grab for big climate finance flows linger, climate policymakers appear more open to working with humanitarians in some specialised ways – in particular amid conflict and fragility.
As demonstrated by another Peace, Relief, and Recovery Day at COP29, there’s increasing political recognition of the overlap of climate and conflict, which have historically been very separate policy areas. Policymakers stress the need for climate action in fragile places facing violence – whether that’s preparing for extreme shocks or responding to them. Communities here are among the most vulnerable to climate shocks because of weak institutions and fragmented, exhausted societies.
Humanitarian experts are also increasingly worried about how climate change is affecting the crisis-affected communities they work with (how do you better protect people in camps from floods or heatwaves?). They know that the conventional rapid emergency responses of the past don’t cut it anymore. Meanwhile, there’s growing concern about doing the above in a way that doesn’t exacerbate conflict divisions; peacebuilders see potential for using green projects as an entry point for dialogue.
Next steps: Could the proposed remedies help drive forward the long-elusive “nexus”? With a few exceptions, the push to better link the different corners of the aid world – humanitarian, development, peace, climate – has been more theoretical than concrete.
The programmes highlighted by policymakers pushing the climate-conflict agenda – such as mapping climate hazards in Yemen or protecting livelihoods in Niger – call for a wider approach that draws resources from various institutions and finance pots. The common thread is making communities more resilient through multifaceted programming that isn’t solely confined to short-term humanitarian aid or longer-term development support, for example. It’s just as well, because experts are worried the climate-conflict buzz could also be used as an excuse by donors to double-count scarce aid and climate funds.
Edited by Andrew Gully.
