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At least one million women and girls have lost access to critical humanitarian assistance since January 2025 as unprecedented funding cuts push women’s organisations in crisis-hit countries to the brink of collapse, UN Women warned on Friday.
In a new report titled “Beyond the Breaking Point”, the UN agency said severe reductions in humanitarian funding are forcing organisations that provide life-saving services to women and girls to scale back or suspend operations at a time when global humanitarian needs have reached record levels.
According to UN Women, around 120 million women and girls worldwide currently require humanitarian assistance and protection. However, local women’s organisations, often the only groups able to reach vulnerable communities in conflict zones, are facing acute financial shortages.
These organisations continue to operate in some of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, including Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Haiti, supporting survivors of gender-based violence, displaced families and vulnerable communities long after international attention has faded.
“Every dollar withdrawn from women’s organisations is a dollar withdrawn from survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, displaced mothers, girls forced from school, and communities struggling to survive,” said Sofia Calltorp, UN Women Chief of Humanitarian Action.
The report, based on responses from 855 women-led organisations across 52 conflict- and crisis-affected countries, paints a grim picture of the growing humanitarian emergency.
It found that at least one million women and girls have already lost access to essential services because of what UN Women described as the steepest annual decline in humanitarian aid on record.
Nearly 90 percent of surveyed organisations said they could no longer meet existing levels of need, while 84 percent reported rising demand for their services.
Women and girls living in remote and hard-to-reach areas are among the worst affected, with 63 percent of organisations reporting cuts to services in those communities.
The report also highlighted a sharp rise in gender-based violence. About 86 percent of organisations said such violence had increased, while 62 percent reported that safe spaces for women and girls had either closed or been significantly reduced.
Funding shortages are also undermining efforts to promote women’s leadership and gender equality. One in five organisations has already suspended programmes focused on women’s empowerment, while many humanitarian workers continue providing services without pay.
Nearly two-thirds of organisations said staff were working voluntarily to keep essential programmes running, even as almost half reported growing staff burnout. Meanwhile, 88 percent observed worsening mental health among the women and girls they support.
The impact is already being felt across crisis-affected communities. Half of the organisations surveyed said they had introduced waiting lists or were forced to turn away women and girls because they lacked the resources to meet demand.
In addition, 92 percent reported rising poverty among the women they serve, while 82 percent said increasing numbers of girls were dropping out of school.
UN Women warned that the collapse of women’s organisations would have consequences beyond the immediate humanitarian response, weakening women’s participation in community leadership, recovery efforts and peacebuilding. More than half of the organisations surveyed reported declining involvement of women in local decision-making.
The agency called for urgent and sustained international investment in women-led organisations, describing them as indispensable frontline responders in humanitarian emergencies.
“Without immediate action, the organisations that have kept women and girls alive through the world’s worst crises risk becoming another casualty of war,” Calltorp said. UN News
