Hello, this is Kasmira. As US budget cuts leave millions without aid, an academic commission is making the case for affected communities and local actors to be placed at the centre of humanitarian response.
Our colleagues at Le Temps spoke with its co-chair Karl Blanchet, director of the Centre for Humanitarian Studies in Geneva. |
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Yemenis receive rations of food aid, supplied by the Mona Relief agency, in Sana'a, Yemen, 31 July 2025. (Keystone/EPA/Yahya Arhab)
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It is an invisible catastrophe with a potentially devastating human toll. Cuts to humanitarian aid – led above all by the United States, historically the most generous donor – could cause up to 14 million avoidable deaths by 2030 as care is rationed for infectious diseases, maternal health and malnutrition, according to a study published in The Lancet in September 2025.
Before Donald Trump's return to the White House, the medical journal and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore had launched a commission to reform a humanitarian sector already under severe strain. Presented this Wednesday in Geneva, before heading to Washington, Dakar, Nairobi, Amman, Dhaka and Bogotá, the report makes for an alarming read.
The number of war victims across the world has not been this high in 20 years. In 2026, 239 million people rely on humanitarian aid. Yet the UN is compelled to focus on just 87 million. “This is not solely a funding problem – it is a political and moral failure,” the commission writes. Karl Blanchet, who co-chairs it and directs the Centre for Humanitarian Studies in Geneva, has just returned from a mission in Yemen for the World Health Organization.
Read the full story on Geneva Solutions.
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