Flexible funding
Flexible funding
This page offers up-to-date information on unearmarked and softly earmarked contributions, including donor details.
Flexible funding 2026 Q2 Report
You can download below the flexible funding report for the first 6 months of 2026.
Download the 2026 Q2 report
Looking for information about flexible funding in 2025?
Explore how we used flexible funding resources — both softly earmarked and unearmarked — to respond to needs of forcibly displaced and stateless people around the world in our dedicated page.
Find more information
Flexible Funding: delivering protection and assistance where it is needed most
Flexible funding enables UNHCR to direct resources where they are needed most, when they are needed most. It helps the organization respond rapidly to emergencies, sustain essential services, and support underfunded crises and protection activities. In a context of growing needs and constrained resources, flexible funding ensures assistance is guided by needs rather than funding availability.
What is flexible funding?
UNHCR distinguishes between two types of flexible funding:
- Unearmarked funding: Contributions provided without restrictions on their use. Unearmarked funding gives UNHCR maximum flexibility to allocate resources based on evolving needs, risks and priorities, ensuring timely protection and assistance for people forced to flee and stateless people.
- Softly earmarked funding: Contributions that allow UNHCR to allocate resources within a broader geographical, operational or thematic framework, such as a region, displacement situation, population group or sector. This approach balances donor preferences with the operational flexibility needed to respond effectively to changing circumstances.
In addition, multi-year funding (contributions pledged for 24 months or more) provides predictability that enables UNHCR to plan and allocate resources more strategically over time. When combined with flexibility, multi-year funding strengthens the effectiveness and sustainability of humanitarian responses.
Why does UNHCR ask for flexible funding?
UNHCR relies on the support of governments, private sector partners, foundations and millions of individual donors worldwide. Many donors choose to earmark their support for a specific country, emergency, activity or theme. Such funding is essential and remains a vital source of support for millions of displaced and stateless people.
Rather than earmarking contributions to a specific emergency, operation, or theme, many of our valued partners choose to provide flexible funding in support of UNHCR's mandate as a whole — an expression of trust in the Office, of solidarity with the people we serve, and of the principles of Good Humanitarian Donorship and other shared international commitments. This flexibility is the backbone of principled and effective protection, enabling UNHCR to direct resources swiftly to where needs are greatest, including underfunded and forgotten crises.”
Flexible funding in action
- Rapid emergency response:
When new crises emerge, flexible funding enables UNHCR to act immediately, delivering protection, emergency assistance and life-saving support before dedicated funding is mobilized. - Continuity of essential services:
Flexible funding helps sustain critical programmes while earmarked contributions are being received, ensuring that protection, assistance and solutions activities can continue without interruption. - Support for underfunded priorities:
Flexible funding helps address critical needs that may otherwise remain unmet, including underfunded emergencies, protracted displacement situations, statelessness activities and core protection functions.
How does UNHCR allocate flexible funding?
Its allocation is guided by comparative priority across all contexts, ensuring a balanced and needs-driven distribution of resources.
At the beginning of each year, UNHCR assesses the needs of all operations and reviews expected funding levels and known donor commitments. This informs initial allocations, enabling operations to launch essential activities and services from the outset.
Throughout the year, UNHCR continuously reviews global needs, available resources and projected funding gaps. This allows flexible resources to be allocated where they can have the greatest impact and ensures donor contributions are stewarded responsibly and transparently.
Within this framework:
- Unearmarked funding
Allocated globally, unearmarked funding provides the highest degree of flexibility. It enables UNHCR to respond rapidly to emerging emergencies, support underfunded and less visible operations, and address critical funding gaps across its global network. It can be used multiple times, hence it is extremely valuable. - Softly earmarked funding
Allocated within a defined region, displacement situation or thematic area, softly earmarked funding allows UNHCR to direct resources to the highest-priority needs within that framework. For example, contributions earmarked to a displacement situation can be allocated across affected countries according to evolving needs and operational priorities.
In all cases, flexible funding complements other contributions and is directed to areas where resources are most needed.
The value of flexible funding: mandate, emergencies and global reach
Flexible funding allows UNHCR to deliver on its mandate. As a humanitarian agency mandated to provide protection and assistance to forcibly displaced and stateless populations, UNHCR’s impact is dependent on its ability to respond swiftly and flexibly. If UNHCR has to wait until resources are raised to respond, precious time and opportunities to make a difference and save lives would be lost. As a rights-based agency, UNHCR’s ability to protect those most affected is core - and is deeply linked to its informed understanding of those who are most vulnerable and most at risk.
The funding information displayed on the dashboards below is updated every two weeks, while the indicative flexible and unearmarked funding allocations are updated monthly.
Indicative flexible funding allocations | 2026 (USD)
A snapshot of how UNHCR delivered protection and assistance in the top ten countries receiving the largest flexible funding allocations in the first quarter of 2026:
Indicative unearmarked funding allocations | 2026 (USD)
Previous Flexible Funding Reports
The Flexible Funding Reports contain an overview, financial tables, and case studies of how and where flexible funding made a difference. You can find the previous years' versions of the reports in the dropdown below.
Please note that from 2022 onwards, the report is fully accessible online, and no full PDF version is produced; nevertheless you can find case studies available as PDFs.