Humanitarian Action for Children 2025

New report details program targets and funding needs by country and by region 

UNICEF's 2025 Global Humanitarian Action (HAC) for Children appeal, launched Dec. 5, asks for $9.9 billion to assist more than 172 million people in 146 countries and territories.

The target number includes 109 million children — 55.6 million of whom are girls, and 10.9 million of whom are children with disabilities.

The appeal puts forth key ambitious programmatic targets and funding requirements to address unprecedented humanitarian needs over the coming year — what UNICEF estimates it will need to respond to escalations in new and ongoing conflicts, public health crises and climate change-driven emergencies, while also maintaining essential ongoing programs in health, nutrition, water and sanitation, education, child protection and more. 

In addition to the global appeal, UNICEF issued separate appeals for over two dozen individual countries. Multi-country appeals cover response plans to help refugees from ongoing conflicts in Syria and Ukraine, children affected by armed violence in Latin America, and children and families displaced by multiple crises in Africa's Central Sahel region.

In the appeal's overview report, UNICEF describes the humanitarian situation for children in different regions of the world: East Asia and Pacific, Eastern and Southern Africa, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, and West and Central Africa, outlining the various threats children and families are facing in each region and how UNICEF plans to respond across various program areas, working to meet urgent needs while also fostering resilience and long-term recovery of vulnerable populations.

The largest single-country appeals are for Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gaza and the West Bank, Lebanon and Sudan.

Global targets for impact in 2025 include:

• access to primary health care in UNICEF-supported facilities for 56.9 million children and women
• 34 million children aged 6 to 59 months screened for wasting, a life-threatening form of malnutrition
• community-based mental health and psychosocial support for 20.6 million children, adolescents and caregivers
• gender-based violence risk mitigation, prevention and/or response interventions accessed by 11.1 million women, girls and boys
• 39.2 million people accessing with safe and accessible channels to report sexual exploitation and abuse by personnel who provide assistance to affected populations
• 24 million children reached with formal or non-formal education — including early learning
• 55.3 million people accessing a sufficient quantity and quality of water for drinking and domestic needs
• 2.9 million households benefitting from new or additional social assistance — either cash or in kind — from governments with UNICEF technical assistance support
• 168.8 million people reached with timely and lifesaving information on how and where to access available services
• 7.4 million people sharing their concerns and asking questions through established feedback mechanisms

Read UNICEF's HAC 2025 Overview here. Individual crisis appeals — country, multi-country and region — can be accessed here.

With the release of the HAC 2025 appeal, UNICEF reported its impact in the first half of 2024, based on mid-year results. With UNICEF support:

• 26.4 million children and women accessed primary health care
• 12.2 million children were screened for wasting
• 17.4 million people accessed a sufficient quantity and quality of water for drinking and domestic needs
• 6.4 million people had safe and accessible channels to report sexual exploitation and abuse by personnel who provide assistance to affected populations
• 6.3 million women, girls and boys accessed gender-based violence risk mitigation, prevention and/or response interventions
• 12.6 million children, adolescents and caregivers accessed community-based mental health and psychosocial support
• 9.7 million children accessed formal or non-formal education, including early learning
• 570,009 households were reached with UNICEF-funded humanitarian cash transfers

In announcing its needs for 2025, UNICEF pointed to significant funding gaps for ongoing responses in Burkina Faso, DRC, Lebanon, Mali and Uganda, among other countries. 

"Across the globe, millions of children are being denied their fundamental rights because of a broad array of interconnected crises — from conflict and the consequences of climate change to public health emergencies and rising poverty," UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell wrote in the foreword to the report overview. "The scale of children’s humanitarian needs is at a historically high level, with more children impacted every day."

The $9.9 billion ask for 2025 is roughly the same amount as UNICEF's adjusted appeal 2024, though the 2024 plan aimed to reach fewer people (147 million, including 93.8 million children) across more countries (155).

Flexible funding: central to UNICEF’s mission 

With its 2025 appeal, UNICEF emphasized an urgent need for more flexible funding from donors, to support equitable allocation of resources. Most funds UNICEF receives are still earmarked for a few specific emergencies. "We must urgently reverse this trend so that we can reach all children in humanitarian need, wherever they are," Russell wrote.

Flexible funding allows UNICEF to be:

Fast – able to respond quickly to the needs of the most vulnerable children

Fair — able to meet the needs of children in hard-to-reach areas and in underfunded emergencies, whether the crisis is in the spotlight or not 

Prepared — able to investing in preparedness measures that support early action in an emergency

System strengthening work, an important component of humanitarian action, particularly in protracted crises, relies heavily on flexible funding.

A call to action for UNICEF's partners

The appeal makes clear that support from both private and public sector partners is essential to driving UNICEF's impact, and local partnerships are crucial for reaching children and families in many crisis settings.

With humanitarian needs at an unprecedented high — and with the bleakest funding outlook for 2025 — UNICEF is calling on partners to:

• increase flexible, timely and longer-term funding to meet the mounting needs of the most vulnerable children and their families and to ensure an equitable, inclusive, efficient and agile response on the ground
• ensure funding allocations avoid any diversion of aid from already underfunded crises, ensure existing and additional allocations are based on need, and uphold principles of equity and non-discrimination
• support measures to adapt funding mechanisms to increase the volume, distribution and timely flow of quality funding through the humanitarian system
• prioritize and scale up preparedness efforts and disaster risk reduction strategies
• unlock new and innovative financing resources and mechanisms to mobilize desperately needed additional humanitarian and crisis response funding
• use their influence to insist that children are protected under international law, and push for accountability where children’s rights are violated
• help ensure the meaningful participation of children and their communities in decision making, from peace efforts to climate negotiations to decisions about where humanitarian funding goes

Learn more about UNICEF's 2025 Humanitarian Action for Children appeal. 

UNICEF won't stop until every child is healthy, educated, protected and respected. Learn more about what UNICEF does to create a more equitable world for children.

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