The United Nations\u2019 humanitarian body on Friday announced plans to reduce its staff of more than 2,000 people by 20 per cent, citing \u201ca wave of brutal cuts\u201d which will \u201creduce its presence and operations\u201d in Pakistan and other countries.<\/p>\n
The other countries in which the latest cuts will scale back its operations are Cameroon, Colombia, Eritrea, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Turkiye and Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n
In a letter to staff, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) head Tom Fletcher wrote, \u201cWe will reduce bureaucracy and reporting layers. We will become less top-heavy, substantially reducing senior positions \u2026 but have dynamic and full responses where we are present.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the letter sent on Thursday, excerpts of which were posted on the office\u2019s website on Friday, Fletcher said the agency is facing a funding gap of almost $60 million.<\/p>\n
Since February, OCHA has implemented austerity measures to save $3.7m internally, but that won\u2019t be enough.<\/p>\n
The broader aid situation has grown dire since the Trump administration scrapped 83pc of humanitarian programmes funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). USAID had an annual budget of $42.8 billion, representing 42pc of total global humanitarian aid.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe context we face is the toughest it has ever been for our mission as OCHA, and the system we coordinate,\u201d Fletcher wrote. \u201cThe humanitarian community was already underfunded, overstretched and literally, under attack. Now, we face a wave of brutal cuts.\u201d<\/p>\n
OCHA is an advocacy arm of the UN that delivers reports from the frontline of conflicts \u201cto amplify the voices of crisis-affected people\u201d, according to its website.<\/p>\n
It has long been active in response to ongoing violence in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and other conflict zones to provide humanitarian aid.<\/p>\n
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which employed nearly 20,000 people at the end of September, also indicated in March that it expects a \u201csignificant reduction\u201d in its workforce due to the absence of American funding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United Nations\u2019 humanitarian body on Friday announced plans to reduce its staff of more than 2,000 people by 20 per cent, citing \u201ca wave of brutal cuts\u201d which will \u201creduce its presence and operations\u201d in Pakistan and other countries. The other countries in which the latest cuts will scale back its operations are Cameroon, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8042,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8041"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8043,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8041\/revisions\/8043"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}