Global Appeal 2025
Global Appeal 2025
UNHCR’s Global Appeal 2025 describes UNHCR’s plans for 2025, including anticipated changes in the global population of forcibly displaced and stateless people, the budget required to meet their needs, and the actions UNHCR plans to take.
This Global Appeal highlights UNHCR’s plans for 2025 and the funding it needs to protect, assist and empower a record number of forcibly displaced and stateless people, and to help them find solutions to their situations.
A full response to this Appeal would allow UNHCR to prepare in advance, anticipate challenges, and engage strategically on a systematic and multi-year basis when needed.
are needed in 2025 to protect and assist forcibly displaced and stateless people
in which UNHCR will be present and undertake action
are projected to be forcibly displaced or stateless in 2025
Millions more have been displaced for years, decades even, having fled bloodshed and instability, from Myanmar to the Democratic Republic of Congo, and many other places in between. This Global Appeal 2025 describes how, against this backdrop, and with few solutions on the horizon, we expect forced displacement and statelessness to evolve in the coming year, what we plan to do about it, and why your support is more needed than ever
Limiya | A Sudanese refugee in South Sudan
When violence erupted in Khartoum in April 2023, Limiya Daud thought at first that it was just another protest. She soon realised it was far more serious. Limiya and her children left their home that evening, heading south on foot to the city of Kosti.
"We didn't want to leave Sudan. It wasn't until a bomb fell on our neighbour's house, that we decided to leave."
The family later continued further south and crossed the border into South Sudan, arriving at a transit centre in the town of Renk, which was receiving around 1,000 people daily. UNHCR helped the family move 300km to an established refugee camp in Maban county, where she was able to start a business selling food, which helped to provide for her children.
"Things are difficult, but I wish my children can get a good education, good health care and security here."
Global population planning figures
UNHCR sets its annual budget based on the projected number of forcibly displaced and stateless people for the upcoming year. By the end of 2025, UNHCR forecasts suggest that there will be 139.3 million forcibly displaced and stateless people across 136 countries and territories who fall under our mandate and are in need of protection and support.
Global funding needs
Based on the population planning figures, UNHCR has calculated a required budget of $10.248 billion. This budget is designed to enable UNHCR and its partners to provide life-saving protection, assistance and solutions in new and ongoing displacement situations. Of the total, $9.107 billion – or 89 per cent – is planned for operations in the field, with $9.748 billion – 95 per cent – allocated to programmed activities.
2025 budget needs
Major country operations budgets over the years
Southern Lebanon: A convoy of UN humanitarian aid trucks travels to Hasbaya district in October 2024, delivering almost 3,000 core relief items, including UNHCR blankets and mattresses, to the Hasbaya Disaster Risk Reduction Unit. The assistance will be distributed to four municipalities, supporting more than 2,000 displaced people.
© UNHCR/Houssam Hariri
Outcome Areas
OA1 - Access
UNHCR launched in Jordan a self-renewal service via kiosks, making it easier and faster for refugees to update their information and renew their documents. Lubna Zeineh from UNHCR registration staff conducts an iris scan for Hamza Al-Homsi, a 9-year-old Syrian refugee using the kiosk system.
OA2 - Status
OUTCOME AREA 2
Status determination
- Global financial needs: $213 million
- Change from 2024 budget: +5%
Faced with a historic rise in asylum applications, a slew of emergencies, and increasingly complex mixed movements of refugees and migrants, asylum procedures must be able to provide international protection promptly and fairly to those who need it.
In 2025, UNHCR will process asylum claims in about 45 countries where no fair and efficient systems exist. Elsewhere, it will reinforce national systems for determining refugee status and statelessness, with a new online asylum procedures toolkit and country guidance documents for States, a new Global Alliance to End Statelessness, and assistance for individuals needing help with the legal procedures.
Matin, a 20-year-old refugee from Afghanistan, on his way to work in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He arrived in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2022 and was granted international protection in 2023, enabling him to stay and access basic rights. With support from UNHCR, Catholic Relief Services, and the Public Employment Services, he found work at a Sarajevo-based textile company.
OA3 - Policy
After fleeing twice and losing her land documents, Mary returned to Hai Matar in South Sudan. With support from the EU, UNHCR, and partners, she reclaimed her family’s land and built a new home. The HLP project helps displaced families secure shelter and resolve land issues through legal aid and peaceful solutions.
OA4 - GBV
Fathia Adoumassid, a Sudanese refugee lawyer providing legal assistance to other refugee women in Chad.
OA5 - Children
OUTCOME AREA 5
Child protection
- Global financial needs: $236 million
- Change from 2024 budget: -7%
The number of forcibly displaced children reached around 47 million in 2023 and is expected to keep rising in 2024 and 2025. Children who have been forced to flee or who are stateless are exposed to many risks, including violence, trafficking, detention and death.
In 2025, UNHCR will implement its new Child protection policy, advocate for the inclusion of refugees in national child protection systems, support birth registration, and provide child protection services where national institutions cannot.
A UNHCR staff member looks at refugee and migrant children's drawings after distributing education kits in Trinidad and Tobago, where the Government allowed Venezuelan children into the public school system in September 2024.
OA6 - Justice
Ali, a Syrian refugee, was arrested in March 2025 when his documents weren’t recognized. With legal aid from Raghad, a lawyer from UNHCR’s partner IRC, he was released after three days and continues to receive legal assistance.
OA7 - Community
In Ban Mai Nai Soi refugee camp, Thailand, Karenni women refugees from Myanmar take part in a weaving training led by WEAVE NGO. The initiative helps preserve traditional artisan skills while promoting refugee women's empowerment and sustainable livelihoods.
OA8 - Basic needs
Beneficiaries receiving cash grants at the Kabul Encashment Centre, Afghanistan.
OA9 - Shelter
UNHCR and partners have relocated Sudanese refugees from a spontaneous site at Adre, on the Chadian border, to a newly established site in Dougi, Chad, where they are assigned shelters and have access to food, clean water and latrines.
OA10 - Health
Asha Amber and Amos Nabwela check in on Buchumi, a Burundian refugee, and her baby girl Light, at the Natukobenyo Health Centre, Kenya. UNHCR built and equipped the maternity ward with support from the European Union, and it is managed by the UNHCR’s health partner, the Kenya Red Cross Society.
OA11 - Education
Sudanese refugees attending secondary school at the Farchana refugee camp in eastern Chad, face an uncertain future, as cuts to global humanitarian funding have made it impossible to pay their teachers’ salaries.
OA12 - WASH
Solar-powered water points provide safe, reliable water for refugees and host community in Maban, South Sudan.
OA13 - Livelihoods
Samuel Binja is the founder of the Kalobeyei Initiative 4 Better Life which won the Refugee-led Innovation Fund 2024 for a hydroponic sprout farming project, helping to address food security and nutrition challenges in the refugee community during a severe food crisis brought on by East Africa’s prolonged drought.
OA14 - Returns
OUTCOME AREA 14
Voluntary repatriation and sustainable reintegration
- Global financial needs: $335 million
- Change from 2024 budget: +15%
Record numbers of people are being forced to flee, and very few are able to go home, although the majority routinely say they want to, once they can do so in safety and with dignity. But it is not as simple as going home and resuming life as it was – a premature or unsustainable return can give rise to new risks.
In 2025, UNHCR will help millions of refugees keep informed about the risks and opportunities that would await them on their return. We will conduct surveys to understand the intentions of potential returnees and undertake return monitoring and policy dialogues to help make their returns safe, dignified and successful, seizing on opportunities for partnerships that will improve conditions for returns.
UNHCR and IOM in Lebanon – working in close coordination with the authorities of both countries – facilitated the first voluntary return convoy of 72 Syrian refugees from Lebanon to the Syrian Arab Republic, as part of the Organized Voluntary Return Programme.
OA15 - Resettlement
OUTCOME AREA 15
Resettlement and complementary pathways
- Global financial needs: $231 million
- Change from 2024 budget: +2%
With millions of refugees unable to go home, resettlement and complementary pathways (such as education, employment, family reunification and humanitarian visas) provide opportunities for long-lasting solutions. UNHCR projects 2.9 million refugees will need resettlement in 2025, up from 2.4 million in 2024.
In 2025, UNHCR will seek resettlement for the refugees most in need. We aim to strengthen data-sharing collaborations with partners involved in resettlement, expand opportunities for complementary pathways, open regular migration systems up to refugees, and build refugees’ skillsets so they can qualify for employment and education pathways.
Congolese refugees board a plane at Kasulu airstrip in the United Republic of Tanzania to fly to the capital, Dar-es-Salaam, where they will catch international flights to third countries for resettlement.
OA16 - Local solutions
Senior Chief Mumena of the Kaonde people in Zambia’s Northwestern Province is a strong advocate for refugee inclusion. In Meheba Refugee Settlement, he promotes peaceful coexistence and local integration, urging communities to welcome refugees as neighbors.
Impact Areas
Forcibly displaced and stateless people have fundamental rights, including protection, a safe environment in which to live until they find a durable solution, and an opportunity to influence their own futures and build better lives. In UNHCR’s global results framework, the four Impact Areas aim to measure the extent to which forcibly displaced and stateless people enjoy these overarching rights, and to capture the changes over time.
Protect
Howyda Tegama, a refugee from Sudan, registers with UNHCR Egypt in Cairo 14 months after a civil war broke out in Sudan. Howyda fled to Egypt in July 2023 along with thousands of other refugees, leaving everything behind.
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IMPACT AREA 1
Protect: Attaining favourable protection environments
- Global financial needs: $2.591 billion
- Change from 2024 budget: -3%
People fleeing across borders must be able to reach a place of safety and have their claim to asylum recognized, and not be returned to a country where they may face danger or persecution.
In 2025, UNHCR will strengthen protection by improving legal frameworks and access to documentation, territory and asylum, and address protection risks.
The budget for Impact Area 1, Protect, amounts to $2.591 billion, or 25% of the budget, a decrease of $78.7 million, or 3%, compared to the 2024 budget. The largest regional increase ($24.8 million) is in the East and Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes, driven by the response to the Sudan situation in South Sudan and Uganda.
Respond
UNHCR and partners provide support for Syrian and Lebanese people at the Joussieh border crossing in the Governorate of Homs in the Syrian Arab Republic, after intense Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon caused hundreds of thousands to flee.
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IMPACT AREA 2
Respond: Realizing rights in safe environments
- Global financial needs: $4.427 billion
- Change from 2024 budget: -12%
People who have been forced to flee need basic services, ranging from life-saving emergency aid to longer-term needs such as health and education. If they cannot work and are not included in national services, they may require assistance until they can find a durable solution.
UNHCR will continue to deliver life-saving protection and assistance to millions of forcibly displaced and stateless people in 2025, including providing core relief items and cash assistance, responding to gender-based violence, and developing preparedness capacities.
The budget for Impact Area 2, Respond, totals $4.427 billion, or 43% of the budget. Despite the increases in West and Central Africa ($7 million) and southern Africa ($2.8 million), a net decrease of $587.4 million, or 12%, is planned compared to the 2024 budget.
Empower
Farida, a mother-of-seven who lives in Kala Gerd village in Afghanistan’s Herat province, collects her first honey harvest. She is one of 50 men and women trained as beekeepers in a livelihood programme run by UNHCR and its partner, the Women's Activities and Social Services Association.
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IMPACT AREA 3
Empower: Empowering communities and achieving gender equality
- Global financial needs: $1.365 billion
- Change from 2024 budget: -1%
Forcibly displaced and stateless people are best placed to build their own futures, if the tools and opportunities are available. This means having the right to decent work, access to education, gender equality, and the chance to participate in decisions that affect their lives.
In 2025, UNHCR, together with partners, will empower displaced persons to become contributors to their communities and economies. These efforts aim not only to transform individual lives but also to foster stability and progress on a broader scale.
The budget for Impact Area 3, Empower, totals $1.365 billion, or 13% of the budget, with a decrease of $19.2 million, or 1%, compared to the 2024 budget. The largest increases in Impact Area 3 are expected in West and Central Africa ($36.6 million) and the East and Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes ($15 million).
Solve
After 10 years of exile, Halimatou longs to return home and rebuild her life. She has decided to register to embark in the next convoy from Cameroon to the Central African Republic (CAR). UNHCR facilitates voluntary repatriations for thousands of refugees who express a desire to return to safe areas in the CAR.
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IMPACT AREA 4
Solve: Securing solutions
- Global financial needs: $1.365 billion
- Change from 2024 budget: +16%
Forced displacement and statelessness must come to an end. For stateless people, that means acquiring a nationality. For displaced people, it could be a voluntary return; integration or naturalization in their place of exile; or resettlement or another pathway to a new country.
In 2025, UNHCR will pursue the goal of securing solutions including through voluntary returns, resettlement and complementary pathways. With some 2.9 million refugees in need of resettlement in 2025, UNHCR will strengthen its efforts towards advancing solutions in third countries. The promotion of responsibility- and burden-sharing arrangements will continue, as will efforts to sustain the momentum generated by the Global Refugee Forum.
The budget for Impact Area 4, Solve, totals $1.365 billion, or 13% of the 2025 budget, with an increase of $185.1 million, or 16%, compared to the 2024 current budget. The main increases are in the Middle East and North Africa ($80 million), Europe ($37.4 million) and Asia and the Pacific ($22 million).
Areas of Strategic Focus
In its Strategic Directions 2022-2026, UNHCR identified several priority Focus Areas requiring sustained attention and pledged to address them with discipline and unwavering commitment. This section highlights UNHCR’s strategic engagement across key areas, including climate action, internal displacement, statelessness, collaboration with development actors, accountability to affected populations, and advocacy for alternatives to dangerous journeys.
Internal displacement
A girl walks barefoot on a dirt path between inadequate shelters in Ammar bin Yasser site in Yemen. In 2024, 18.2 million people in Yemen were in need of humanitarian assistance, including 4.5 million who were internally displaced. Around 1.5 million of them live in nearly 2,400 collective displacement sites, which are often incredibly overcrowded, with limited water and hygiene facilities.
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FOCUS AREA
Internal displacement
- Global needs for the IDP response: $1.518 billion
- Change from 2024 budget: -20%
By mid-2024, around 70 million people who had fled conflict or violence were displaced within their own country. The numbers have doubled in the past decade and are set to double again by 2030, based on current trends.
With its legal and protection expertise, its operational delivery and its coordination of humanitarian responses, in 2025 UNHCR will aim to support States in their responsibility to protect, assist and find solutions for internally displaced people (IDPs). We will seek the strengthening of legal and policy frameworks in at least 20 countries, and convene State-to-State exchanges on addressing internal displacement.
Accountability to affected people
Yana, 41, has been displaced by the war in Ukraine twice – first in 2014, seeking refuge in the city of Starobilsk, and then on 24 February 2022 when the war escalated into the full-scale Russian invasion. Drawing on her experience, she has become an advocate for other displaced people and now leads the Council for Internally Displaced People, which was created within the Luhansk region administration.
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FOCUS AREA
Accountability to affected people
Forcibly displaced communities and individuals, in all their diversity, must be meaningfully and continuously involved in decisions that affect their lives, through participation, transparent communication, opportunities for feedback and avenues to use their skills and initiative.
In 2025, UNHCR will invest in participation, communication, feedback mechanisms and organizational adaptation, with new digital tools that serve to empower, include and inform forcibly displaced and stateless people.
Statelessness
Tebogo Khoza, 26, at his in-laws’ home where he lives with his partner and son. Formerly stateless, Tebogo, who is a gamekeeper in South Africa’s Limpopo province, finally received his birth certificate in 2023, after a 10-year battle for citizenship. Supported by UNHCR partner Lawyers for Human Rights, a court ruling recognized him as a South African citizen.
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FOCUS AREA
Statelessness
- Global financial needs: $161 million
- Change from 2024 budget: +12%
Millions of people are stateless, which makes it hard to live a dignified life and exercise basic rights. Most countries have no safeguards against childhood statelessness and many do not allow women to confer nationality on their children in the same way as men.
In 2025, bolstered by a new Global Alliance to End Statelessness, UNHCR will aim to persuade more States to demonstrate their commitment to tackle statelessness, while ensuring more stateless people can apply for nationality, enjoy their basic rights, and have the same access as nationals to public services and economic opportunities. UNHCR will provide States with technical assistance, work to improve the quality of data on statelessness, and hold inter-regional dialogues on ending statelessness.
Climate action
A group of women carry their belongings across muddy ground at a gathering site for IDPs near Kassala, Sudan. Over 400 UNHCR tents have been erected at the site, which is expected to host some 800 families who have been newly displaced by severe flooding.
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FOCUS AREA
Climate action
- Global financial needs: $1.203 billion
- Change from 2024 budget: +12%
People who have been forced to flee are especially vulnerable to the devastating impacts of climate change.
In 2025, UNHCR aims to protect them, shrink its own carbon footprint, and make its humanitarian responses, such as water and shelter, more climate-resilient. Climate action will include investment in reforestation, solarization and clean cooking projects, adopting cleaner product specifications for relief items, reducing emissions from UNHCR offices, and anticipating climate-related hazards that may threaten forcibly displaced populations.
In UNHCR’s 2025 budget, around $1.2 billion of planned expenditure is associated with climate action.
Working with development actors
A UNHCR staff member and the General Manager of a local water company in Aden, Yemen, visit the Sewerage Infrastructure Project, a partnership between UNHCR, the Government of Yemen, and the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development. It is expected to benefit 1.5 million people by 2026, including refugees, IDPs, and their host communities.
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FOCUS AREA
Working with development actors
UNHCR is increasingly working with development actors such as the World Bank to progress towards solutions and sustain government-led responses, since humanitarian funding alone cannot meet the challenge of unprecedented and protracted displacement.
In 2025, UNHCR will encourage greater involvement by international financial institutions and development agencies, supporting the inclusion of forcibly displaced and stateless people in national economies and services, generating more socioeconomic data, and encouraging more countries to include forcibly displaced populations in their national statistics.
Alternatives to dangerous journeys
Orlando, from the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, trekked through the Darién jungle with his 9-year-old daughter, and now has a word of warning for people thinking of taking the same route: "Please do not risk your children. The jungle is hard and even harder with children." UNHCR works with the Government of Panama, local NGOs, communities, the private sector, and municipalities to address the humanitarian needs of people making the crossing.
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FOCUS AREA
Alternatives to dangerous journeys
People with a valid claim to protection often undertake desperate and dangerous journeys, during which they face severe threats, including gender-based violence, trafficking, torture, and physical harm.
UNHCR aims to make such journeys unnecessary, by emphasizing the fundamental safeguards of refugee protection and solutions, by supporting the capacity of State asylum systems, by combating misinformation, by ensuring people are warned about the dangers, and by advocating access to regular pathways. We also seek to leverage the widespread support for the Global Compact on Refugees, which promotes international cooperation, shared responsibility, and support for countries hosting large refugee populations.
The Global Compact on Refugees
Ukrainian refugee Irina Dotsenko, 67, opened her second café in Batumi, Georgia, with a loan from Crystal, a microfinance lender, whose management believes that job and business opportunities are the best way to support refugees helping them achieve self-reliance and easing pressures on host countries. She now employs 30 Ukrainians, as well as 15 Georgians. “This type of financial assistance is crucial for individuals, and it contributes significantly to the country's economy. We've also become useful to Georgia,” Irina says.
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FOCUS AREA
The Global Compact on Refugees
In December 2023, the Global Refugee Forum resulted in over 2,000 pledges of support to advance the objectives of the Global Compact on Refugees.
In 2025, UNHCR aims to sustain momentum by facilitating pledge implementation. UNHCR will continue to identify opportunities to highlight linkages between the Compact and complementary programming frameworks to harmonize humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding efforts in support of host country policy implementation.
Sudan crisis: Internally displaced people who have arrived at a gathering site near Kassala, Sudan, walk towards their shelters, in August 2024. Flooding during the rainy season worsened conditions for people already uprooted by the war in Sudan.
© UNHCR/Aymen Alfadil
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Downloads
The Global Appeal outlines UNHCR's programmatic plans for the year and the funding required to protect, assist and find solutions for the world's forcibly displaced and stateless people. Explore the data and narratives underlying the global picture.
Download the Executive Summary
Download the full Global Appeal
📅 Launch event: The Global Appeal 2025 was officially presented during the annual Pledging Conference on 3 December 2024, where donors were invited and encouraged to show their support for UNHCR's work by announcing financial commitments for the coming year. The session included a presentation of UNHCR's financial needs for 2025 and statements from Member States.
