The UN’s humanitarian coordination arm, OCHA, is planning to cut its workforce by 20%, in the latest sign of turbulence to strike a sector in crisis.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, known as OCHA, faces a $58 million funding gap this year, staff were told during a 10 April town hall outlining plans to grapple with the funding crisis sweeping across the sector.
“OCHA currently has a workforce of around 2,600 staff in over 60 countries. The funding shortfall means we are looking to regroup to an organisation of around 2,100 staff in fewer locations,” Tom Fletcher, the UN’s relief chief and head of OCHA, wrote in an email sent to staff and seen by The New Humanitarian after the meeting. “There will be staff reductions. We will handle these in a humane, fair, open, and disciplined way.”
The UN agency will “scale back its presence and operations” in at least nine locations – Cameroon, Colombia, Eritrea, Gaziantep (Türkiye), Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Zimbabwe – staff were told. It will also end its presence in The Hague.
Information about the cuts and restructuring was shared with The New Humanitarian by three sources familiar with the discussions.
When asked for comment on the situation, OCHA spokespeople pointed to an edited version of Fletcher’s letter to staff, posted to OCHA’s website. They did not respond to specific questions on the timeline for the cuts, how the decisions were made, and the link to a broader “reset” proposed for the sector.
OCHA is the latest humanitarian organisation to announce or plan extensive cuts and restructuring in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s dismantling of American aid, and the longer-term squeeze on donor government budgets.
Local NGOs cut staff nearly overnight after Trump and advisor Elon Musk abruptly axed foreign aid payments in January. International NGOs soon followed suit; more UN agencies, while slower to act, have told staff of cuts in recent weeks.
“To achieve the savings we need, we will reduce bureaucracy and remove extra-reporting layers,” Fletcher said in his email to staff. “We will become less top heavy, substantially reducing senior positions.”
In search of a “true reset”
OCHA’s mandate is not aid delivery, but to coordinate often-chaotic emergency responses, where dozens or even hundreds of organisations have a foot on the ground.
As part of its cuts, OCHA is also trying to retool its own structures. Work at headquarters will be “refocused” into three priorities, Fletcher said: crisis response; planning, renewal, and reform; and a fundraising and partnerships arm.
OCHA senior managers were told in February to make recommendations on 20% reductions in their departments.
“It is rather a case of doing the same but with less resources, rearranging the deck chairs without actually changing much.”
The announced changes appear to follow this pattern, but may fall short of more fundamental transformations needed for a sector in crisis, said an aid worker familiar with internal UN agency discussions.
“While there are job cuts and restructuring of offices and departments, there has not really been a substantive prioritisation and change,” said the aid worker, who asked not to be named. “It is rather a case of doing the same but with less resources, rearranging the deck chairs without actually changing much. This seems to have been the approach of most UN agencies.”
With the announced restructuring, Fletcher also seems to be mirroring his broader “humanitarian reset” – a proposed plan to revamp humanitarian action in the wake of the funding crisis.
OCHA will “align” its reductions and changes with budget prioritisation recommendations made by the IASC emergency directors group, Fletcher said. The grouping of senior humanitarian officials mostly comprises UN agencies and big NGOs. Those recommendations have not been made public.
This will “ensure that we come together as an organisation and support the system-wide changes being worked on as part of the reset”, Fletcher wrote.
But discussions on the reset have largely taken place behind closed doors, with little apparent input from civil society groups or others with a stake in the system.
“A true reset must lead to more fundamental changes to longstanding humanitarian power structures that have contributed to exclusion, inefficiency, and a lack of accountability to crisis-affected people,” civil society groups, including NEAR, a network of Global South organisations, said in a 10 April statement.
For now, Fletcher said OCHA and its staff need to prepare for the road ahead.
“In implementing these changes, we will need clear external communication to explain internally and externally the tough choices we are making; and clear asks of donors,” Fletcher wrote in his staff letter.
“You should be firm with the leadership on what you can no longer do. And let’s build in some flexibility – plans will adapt as the context changes. The situation could get even tougher.”
Edited by Andrew Gully.
