Surging conflicts, rising hunger, global funding cuts, and collapsing basic services are driving humanitarian needs for children to extreme levels worldwide. As UNICEF's Humanitarian Action for Children 2026 (HAC) appeal is launched today, US$7.66 billion is urgently required to provide life-saving assistance to 73 million children - including 37 million girls and over 9 million children with disabilities - across 133 countries and territories next year.
Across every region, children caught in emergencies are facing overlapping crises that are growing in scale and complexity.
Escalating conflicts are driving mass displacement and exposing children to grave violations at the highest levels ever recorded. Attacks on schools and hospitals continue unabated, while verified cases of rape and other forms of sexual violence against children are rising sharply. In many crises, children and the aid workers attempting to reach them are being deliberately targeted.
"Around the world, children caught in conflict, disaster, displacement and economic turmoil continue to face extraordinary challenges," said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. "Their lives are being shaped by forces far beyond their control: violence, the threat of famine, intensifying climate shocks, and the widespread collapse of essential services."
The global humanitarian funding environment has deteriorated dramatically in 2025. Announced and anticipated funding cuts by donor governments are already limiting UNICEF's ability to reach millions of children in dire need. Severe shortfalls in 2024 and 2025 are forcing UNICEF to make impossible choices. Across UNICEF's nutrition programming alone, a 72 per cent funding gap in 2025 forced cuts in 20 priority countries - reducing planned targets from more than 42 million to over 27 million women and children. In education, a shortfall of US$745 million has left millions more children at risk of losing access to learning, protection and stability. For child protection, rising violations coincide with shrinking resources, threatening programmes for survivors of sexual violence, children recruited or used by armed groups, and those requiring urgent mental health and psychosocial support.
"Severe funding shortfalls are placing UNICEF's life-saving programs under immense strain," said Russell. "Across our operations, frontline teams are being forced into impossible decisions: focusing limited supplies and services on children in some places over others, decreasing the frequency of services children receive, or scaling back interventions that children depend on to survive."
At the same time, humanitarian access is being restricted at levels unseen in recent years. In many emergencies, UNICEF and partners cannot reach children trapped behind shifting frontlines, making sustained humanitarian diplomacy essential to secure access and to protect children from escalating violations.
UNICEF warns that more than 200 million children will require humanitarian assistance in 2026. Many live in protracted crises, leaving entire generations at risk of under-nutrition, denied education, exposed to disease outbreaks, and deprived of safety and stability.
Despite these challenges, UNICEF is adapting its humanitarian action to operate effectively within a shifting humanitarian landscape, while remaining firmly anchored in child rights and the Core Commitments for Children in Humanitarian Action, which guide UNICEF's response. This includes:
- prioritising life-saving interventions with the greatest impact.
- strengthening partnerships with governments and local actors.
- investing in preparedness, risk analysis and anticipatory action.
- building resilience of national systems, and strengthening humanitarian diplomacy.
"The current global funding crisis does not reflect a decline in humanitarian need, but rather a growing gap between the scale of suffering and the resources available," said Russell. "While UNICEF is working to adapt to this new reality, children are already paying the price of shrinking humanitarian budgets."
UNICEF is urging national governments, public sector donors and private sector partners to increase investment in children, prioritising flexible and multi-year funding; support locally led response and national systems; uphold humanitarian principles and the centrality of protection; and remove barriers that impede humanitarian access.
