The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that the humanitarian community in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been forced to reprioritize its response plan due to critical funding shortfalls. The move is part of a "Humanitarian Reset," following a dramatic drop in funding triggered by the United States' brutal cessation of most contributions and cuts to humanitarian assistance by other major donors around the world.
This year's full Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) for the DRC aims to assist 11 million people - out of 21.2 million people in need of humanitarian assistance across the country - at a cost of US$ 2.54 billion. To date, just over $245 million - or 10 percent - has been raised, half the amount secured by the same time last year, despite escalating needs as a result of the crisis in the east of the country.
As part of the 2025 HRP, humanitarian agencies this week completed and published a rigorous prioritization assessment, identifying life-saving interventions to help 6.8 million of the most vulnerable people at a cost of $1.25 billion - about half of what is needed for the full response plan.
Humanitarian Reset
The Humanitarian Reset is a major new initiative within the global humanitarian system, launched in early 2025 in response to the unprecedented challenge of funding shortfalls. It was introduced and is being led by the head of OCHA and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Tom Fletcher.
The Reset aims to fundamentally reprioritize and restructure humanitarian action, focusing on saving lives, streamlining operations, and moving power and resources closer to affected communities, either at the national or local level.
A key element of the Humanitarian Reset is the prioritization of life-saving actions. The reset calls for a focus on the most urgent, life-saving interventions, recognizing that limited resources mean some activities must be scaled back or stopped.
The consequences are brutal. To take one example: Providing aid to those who are starving, may lead to cutting aid to those who are at critical levels of hunger. And it isn't a sustainable solution, because if you cease support to those at emergency levels of food insecurity, the number of people falling into catastrophic hunger is likely to increase.
Furthermore, humanitarian aid is not only about saving lives, at its core it is also about alleviating human suffering, a goal that is becoming increasingly elusive. One of the four core humanitarian principles - humanity - requires that human suffering be addressed wherever it is found.
Global humanitarian funding has plummeted in 2025, largely due to these extreme US funding cuts, but other major donors such as the UK and Germany have also reduced their support. While global funding has been declining since 2022, despite rising needs, this year's levels are at record lows.
The situation is so bleak because, over the years, the United States has been the largest donor of humanitarian aid. In 2024, the US government provided more than 40 percent of all humanitarian aid tracked by the United Nations. Its sudden withdrawal from this key role has left a vacuum that cannot be filled without urgent additional funding from other and new donors as well as drastic measures.
The announced radical reductions in resources come at a time when global crises are intensifying, putting millions of people at risk of hunger, disease and death. The suspension of humanitarian aid marks a sharp break with decades of US foreign policy.
For years, humanitarian actors, including aid agencies and concerned governments, have failed to mobilize new sources of funding and to diversify funding sources, such as by engaging the private sector. For years, the bulk of annual funding - more than 80 percent - has come from a mere ten countries or international organizations.
Many of the world's largest economies do not participate in global humanitarian funding at all, and numerous other wealthy countries contribute only marginally to the global effort.
The consequences of recent funding cuts are already being felt across the world. Humanitarian organizations, including UN agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), have been severely impacted and have responded with desperate measures, including the suspension of many field programs that are essential to saving lives and alleviating human suffering for those most in need.
Recently, Fletcher warned that millions of people around the world will die because of the critical crisis in global humanitarian funding.
Escalating conflict in eastern DRC
While humanitarian aid is shrinking, needs are not. OCHA on Thursday called for greater protection of civilians in conflict-affected areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and more support to prevent the collapse of essential services and address the root causes of the crisis.
The humanitarian situation in eastern DRC remains dire, with reports of ongoing fighting. Since early January, escalating conflict and intensified attacks by the Mouvement du 23 mars (M23) rebel group in the provinces of North and South Kivu have displaced hundreds of thousands of people, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis and straining already scarce resources.
Other armed groups have taken advantage of the security vacuum created by the redeployment of the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC) to launch attacks that have killed hundreds of civilians in recent months.
Renewed fighting in eastern DRC has led to a dramatic deterioration of the humanitarian situation and mass displacement, particularly in North and South Kivu provinces, where fighting has left thousands dead and thousands of others injured. Widespread violations of human rights and international humanitarian law have been reported, including summary executions, indiscriminate attacks, sexual violence, and the recruitment of children.
According to UN officials, the escalation of conflict in the eastern region of the country has reached levels not seen in the last three decades. The worsening violence has exacerbated what was already one of the world's worst and largest humanitarian crises.
Since January, more than one million people - including an estimated 400,000 children - have been displaced by violence in the eastern provinces of Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu, but the situation remains highly volatile and difficult to assess. The M23 has also forced hundreds of thousands of people to return to their areas of origin in a second wave of displacement.
The situation has led some 140,000 people to seek refuge in neighboring countries in the first months of this year, mainly in Burundi and Uganda. Some 70,000 refugees and asylum seekers have arrived in Burundi, while some 63,000 people have crossed into Uganda.
A deepening food crisis has gripped the people of the DR Congo in recent months, with conflict, economic instability and rising food prices putting millions of people at risk. The situation has deteriorated particularly in the four eastern provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu, Ituri and Tanganyika, where more than 10.3 million people are facing crisis levels or worse, including 2.3 million in emergency levels of hunger (IPC4).
The country is also plagued by major health emergencies, including mpox and cholera.
“As an example of how dire the humanitarian situation is, the Congolese Government has officially declared a cholera outbreak in six provinces. As of this Monday, more than 18,000 cholera cases and 364 deaths have been reported since January and health authorities are facing shortages of medical supplies,” UN spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters on Thursday.
“Authorities have requested more support from partners, including strengthening epidemiological surveillance, ensuring access to clean water, and distributing hygiene kits.”