The United Nations humanitarian body announced plans to reduce its personnel from more than 2,000 people by 20 percent, citing “a wave of brutal cuts” that “will reduce its presence and operations” in Pakistan and other countries.
The other countries where the last cuts will reduce their operations are Cameroon, Colombia, Eritrea, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Turkiye and Zimbabwe.
In a letter to staff, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) Tom Fletcher wrote: “We will reduce the layers of bureaucracy and reports. We will become less heavy, substantially reducing senior positions … but we have dynamic and complete responses where we are present.”
In the letter sent on Thursday, the extracts of which were published on the office website on Friday, Fletcher said the agency faces a financing gap of almost $ 60 million.
Since February, Ocha has implemented austerity measures to save $ 3.7 million internally, but that will not be enough.
The wider help situation has become serious since the Trump administration discarded the 83PC of humanitarian programs financed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). USAID had an annual budget of $ 42.8 billion, which represented 42pc of total global humanitarian aid.
“The context we face is the most difficult for our mission as Ocha, and the system we coordinate,” Fletcher wrote. “The humanitarian community was already underloaded, overloaded and literally under attack. Now, we face a wave of brutal cuts.”
Ocha is a UN defense arm that offers reports from the first line of conflicts “to amplify the voices of people affected by the crisis,” according to their website.
For a long time it has been active in response to current violence in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and other conflict areas to provide humanitarian aid.
The UN high commissioner for refugees, which used almost 20,000 people at the end of September, also indicated in March that he expects a “significant reduction” in his workforce due to the absence of US funds.
