Latin America and the Caribbean Region Appeal
Humanitarian Action for Children
UNICEF’s Humanitarian Action for Children appeal helps support the agency’s work as it provides conflict- and disaster-affected children with access to water, sanitation, nutrition, education, health and protection services. Return to main appeal page.
Appeal highlights
- Climate change-related disasters continue to increase in intensity and frequency throughout the Latin America and Caribbean region, disproportionately affecting the most vulnerable populations, including children. In 2024, multiple emergencies related to droughts, wildfires and floods affected several countries and numerous communities throughout the Amazon region and the Caribbean; this included the earliest Category 4 hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic basin, which made landfall in July 2024.
- Despite the scale and frequency of these disasters, UNICEF will remain at the forefront of enhancing local and national emergency preparedness capacities throughout the region and will support the emergency response efforts of Governments and other partners. UNICEF provides technical expertise in child-centred humanitarian action, ensuring the rapid availability of technical, logistical and human resources to respond to sudden-onset emergencies.
- For 2025, UNICEF is appealing for US$19 million to support emergency preparedness efforts throughout the region and rapid response to the humanitarian needs of children affected by new and protracted crises.
Key statistics
2.3 million children in need of health and nutrition services
3.1 million children in need of protection services
2.8 million children in need of education support
7.2 million people in need of access to safe water
10.3 million people affected by disasters
Funding requirements for 2025
Regional needs and strategy
Humanitarian needs
The humanitarian landscape in Latin America and the Caribbean is intricate, diverse and challenging, with varying crises across countries and subregions. While most nations within the region are classified as high- or middle-income, the region has among the highest wealth inequality in the world. Despite its vast resources, 33 million people live in multidimensional poverty in the region, with governments and partners often facing challenges to effectively addressing the specific humanitarian needs of children during emergencies due to fragile systems, political and socioeconomic instability and limited humanitarian access.
Over the past two decades, more than 190 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean have been affected by emergencies. Climate change-related events, which are increasing in both frequency and severity across the region, disproportionately impact the most vulnerable populations. Indigenous populations, Afro-descendant communities and migrants face heightened risks as global warming and climate variability worsen, directly affecting normal climatic patterns. In 2024, the Caribbean’s hurricane season was forecast to increase by up to 60 per cent compared with the 30-year average, with similarly alarming projections for 2025.
Also in 2024, the El Niño weather phenomenon triggered emergencies including droughts, wildfires and floods, impacting hundreds of thousands of children in the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador and Peru. The Amazon region is facing its worst drought in 45 years, affecting millions in Brazil, Colombia and Peru. In Brazil, extreme drought directly impacted 16 Indigenous groups in 42 Indigenous territories that make up 53 per cent of all Indigenous lands.
Public health emergencies continue to pose significant challenges. In 2024, large outbreaks of dengue and Oropouche fever spread across many countries in the region. As climate change accelerates, such outbreaks are expected to increase. Furthermore, without sufficient vaccination coverage, the region risks an increase in outbreaks of such vaccine-preventable diseases as measles, diphtheria and polio.
UNICEF’s strategy
Guided by the Core Commitments for Children in Humanitarian Action, UNICEF will continue to address the acute humanitarian needs of children affected by crises while strengthening local and regional capacities for emergency preparedness and response. More specifically, UNICEF will focus on enhancing local capacities to bolster national child-centred, shock-responsive systems, including through supporting comprehensive, risk-informed programming at both the regional and country level.
UNICEF’s humanitarian action will prioritize the most vulnerable populations, including Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities, with a focus on pregnant and breastfeeding women and people with disabilities. Gender considerations, protection from sexual exploitation and abuse, early childhood development and adolescent needs will be integrated into all interventions, reinforcing the linkage between humanitarian and development programming. Moreover, localization, capacity building for governments and local actors, accountability to affected populations and humanitarian cash transfers will be embedded in UNICEF’s approach, in line with Grand Bargain commitments.
In the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Brazil and Peru, UNICEF will prioritize integrated interventions in areas affected by droughts, wildfires and floods, focusing on providing life-saving services to children in need of humanitarian aid. In Jamaica and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, UNICEF will continue addressing residual humanitarian needs linked to Hurricane Beryl, which hit the region in July 2024.
Given the region’s complex risk profile and multiple ongoing crises, UNICEF is collaborating with other United Nations agencies and partners to integrate and scale up anticipatory action. UNICEF will ensure rapid deployment of expert surge teams to any country in the region when emergencies strike, alongside sustained investment in humanitarian learning and development for UNICEF and partners. UNICEF remains committed to leveraging strategic partnerships to support children affected by crises; leading or co-leading humanitarian coordination efforts (both cluster and sector) in child protection, education, nutrition and WASH; and contributing to cross-cutting humanitarian coordination at national and regional levels.
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Highlights
Humanitarian Action is at the core of UNICEF’s mandate to realize the rights of every child. This edition of Humanitarian Action for Children – UNICEF’s annual humanitarian fundraising appeal – describes the ongoing crises affecting children in Latin America and the Caribbean; the strategies that we are using to respond to these situations; and the donor support that is essential in this response.
