The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said in a statement Monday that it was cutting 3,500 jobs to save money because of a lack of funds and because many aid programs are under threat.
In a statement, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said that faced with the reality of financial difficulties, UNHCR had to scale back its overall operations and focus on the issues that had the greatest impact on refugees, savings were achieved through the streamlining of Headquarters and regional offices. As part of these cost-cutting measures, UNHCR will close or streamline its offices and reduce senior positions at its Geneva headquarters and regional offices by almost 50 per cent, resulting in a total reduction of 3,500 staff. Hundreds of UNHCR temporary staff will also be separated. The above measures will reduce staff costs by about 30% .
The statement said that even with job cuts, financial assistance to vulnerable families, health care services, education, water and sanitation and other key projects would still be affected. UNHCR is working closely with United Nations Partners, humanitarian organizations and concerned states to minimize the impact on refugees and other populations dependent on UNHCR. At the same time, UNHCR is exploring new business models, such as the placement of staff in other United Nations offices, and accelerating the application of new technologies to improve efficiency.
UNHCR expects that by the end of this year, the agency will have almost as much funding as it did a decade ago, but the number of refugees worldwide now exceeds 122 million, almost double the number a decade ago.
As of June, the 2024 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees had 15,400 permanent employees and 4,400 other workers in more than 130 countries and regions, with a total of nearly 20,000 employees, according to the German news agency DPA.
Since President Donald Trump took office in January, the United States has slashed foreign aid and disrupted the functioning of the United Nations humanitarian agency. The UN’s office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) announced in April that it was laying off 20% of its staff, or more than 500 people, because of“Brutal cuts” in funding, particularly as the US government sharply halted foreign aid, to address the funding gap.