European Humanitarian Forum 2025

Moderating a panel on Humanitarian Response in Ukraine

 It was good to be back moderating at the EHF for the third consecutive year but this year the mood music is very different.

“We need to do more with less” said Maksym Dotsenko, Director-General, Ukrainian Red Cross Society during my panel on the humanitarian response in Ukraine.

Funding cuts are having a real life impact throughout the humanitarian sector including in Ukraine. As Russia’s war against Ukraine enters its fourth year and humanitarian needs are growing in complexity and severity.

Not least because of the sudden contraction in funding following the suspension of US humanitarian programmes but also the overall funding gap for 2025.

According to the 2025 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan nearly 13 million people in need of humanitarian and protection assistance.

The dramatic fall in funding from donors and Tom Fletcher’s the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator call for a humanitarian reset formed the backdrop to discussions on and off stage.

The humanitarian sector is now faced with painful choices – what to prioritise and what to ditch. Inefficiency, duplication, bureaucracy must go while pooling resources and possible mergers between organisations are being floated.

Humanitarian aid could be stripped to providing emergency relief alone. There are fears that programmes focussing on longer term development to build resilience such as through funding health infrastructure and education will go.

Since 2022 the EU has allocated more than one billion Euros for humanitarian aid programmes to Ukraine. It is also EU’s largest programme under its Union Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM).  

But fears loom large over funding cuts.

Iryna Vereshchuk, Deputy Head of the Presidential Office of Ukraine said millions of people are displaced but funding challenges have meant Ukraine has had to prioritise its spending.  Six categories will receive humanitarian funding in 2025  including emergency response after airstrikes, civilian evacuations, winter protection and equipping schools with bomb shelters.

Mr. Wojciech Wilk, CEO of Polish Centre for International Aid expressed concern about the narrowing down of donor aid to core needs. He said humanitarian aid should be coordinated with the government and be supplementary to its efforts.

In addition to its work as first responders during the conflict, the Ukrainian Red Cross is focussing on the future. Maksym Dotsenko, Director-General, Ukrainian Red Cross said the country needs to consider how to deal with mental health and how to rehabilitate veterans and bring them back to civilian life. “Are their communities ready to host them?” he asked.

Ukraine is the largest programme in the history of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) which has recorded tens of thousands of missing people. Mirjana Spoljarich, President of the ICRC pledged “Notwithstanding a lasting agreement we will still be there when a peace has been established and the reason is the tens of thousands of missing. We will not withdraw a long as we need to follow up on the 100,000 cases that are in our files today.” The ICRC has been able to able to inform about thirteen thousand families about the whereabouts of their loved ones.