Attachments
UNICEF launches 2025 humanitarian appeal
Working with partners, UNICEF aims to reach 109 million children with life-saving assistance, wherever it’s needed.
Across the globe, millions of children affected by conflict and the effects of climate change, displacement, rising poverty and disease outbreaks are being denied their fundamental rights.
More than 460 million children are living in, or fleeing from, devastating violence in places including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Myanmar, State of Palestine, Sudan, and Ukraine. Meanwhile, nearly half the world’s children live in countries that are at extremely high risk from the impacts of climate change.
But despite the scale of the challenges, the situation isn’t hopeless. Working with partners through principled humanitarian action, with our response supported by vital flexible funding, UNICEF can reach the most vulnerable children. We can provide them with life-saving services and supplies to ensure equitable access to health care, education, clean water and sanitation. And we can ensure that their rights are upheld.
In 2025, UNICEF is appealing for $9.9 billion in support of our humanitarian action for children. These funds will help us to reach 109 million children living through humanitarian crises with both immediate life-saving services, and investments for their longer-term development.
Responding equitably to historic needs
In the first half of 2024, as part of its humanitarian response, UNICEF and partners provided more than 26 million children and women with primary health care, reached more than 17 million people with safe drinking water, helped nearly 10 million children access education services, and screened more than 12 million children for wasting. But the scale of children’s humanitarian needs has reached historic highs – we estimate that more than 210 million children across 146 countries and territories will need humanitarian assistance during 2025.
Across our humanitarian action and advocacy, UNICEF remains focused on reaching the most vulnerable children – those with disabilities, children from marginalized communities, refugee and migrant children and girls, no matter where they are from.
Flexible funding is essential for these efforts, powering UNICEF’s ability to respond quickly and equitably to emerging crises and to anticipate and prepare for future risks. It also enables us to allocate resources to where they are needed most – which is critical for reaching children in emergencies that have been largely forgotten by the international community.
Yet despite our continued appeal for flexible funding, it only accounts for 9 per cent of the total humanitarian funding received by UNICEF to date, with the majority of funds earmarked and often concentrated in a handful of emergencies. As a result, far too many children are left behind. This trend must be urgently reversed so that we can reach all children in humanitarian need and create a world where the rights of every child are protected and upheld, and where every child can develop and thrive.