Information Note #2: Ongoing UNICEF restructuring initiatives

A global funding crisis is having a significant impact on the lives and futures of some of the most vulnerable children around the world. The scale of the crisis is reflected by the reductions in funding to UNICEF since the start of the year, leading UNICEF to project at least a 20 per cent decline in income from 2026. This poses a direct threat to our ability to deliver life-saving services for children in humanitarian and development contexts alike, at a time when needs are soaring.

Already, the impact of the funding crisis on our programming for children is severe:

• 15 million children risk losing access to nutrition services, placing them at heightened risk of malnutrition and lifelong complications.
• More than 20 million face disruptions in critical healthcare, including immunization.
• 11.5 million children and their families are at increased risk of disease due to compromised access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene services.
• Millions more are losing access to protection and education – especially displaced, refugee and migrant children.

This impact comes at a time when children are already at huge risk. In 2025, more than 213 million children across 146 countries and territories will require humanitarian assistance. Nearly one in five children lives in a conflict zone. Nearly 50 million are displaced. Almost 1 billion children live in poverty, and nearly half of the world’s children live in countries at extremely high risk of the impacts of climate change. These overlapping crises are now compounded by a sharp drop in funding.

As part of a continuous effort to increase efficiencies and stretch our available resources to support children, we are realigning the organization to maximize impact while reducing costs. Our goal is a modern, more agile UNICEF future-proofed for this new, challenging era. We aim to continue to be the organization that is the closest to the field, the best coordinated across the broad scope of work, and the most cost-effective for the children and communities we serve.

We are transforming our approach to delivering technical assistance for our programmes to make it even faster, more context-specific and closer to children. This includes relocating headquarters staff to lower-cost duty stations closer to the children we serve. This will allow teams to respond faster to emerging needs, adapt programming in real time, and stay deeply attuned to local contexts.

We are improving our global coordination by consolidating headquarter and regional office programme positions to provide streamlined technical support. We are removing identified inefficiencies and finding ways to accelerate decision-making and centralize capacity.

And we are continuing to ensure our operations remain the most cost-effective. Even before this crisis, UNICEF was among the most efficient organizations in global development – 90 cents of every dollar we receive goes directly to programmes. We are now building on that foundation to become even more impact-driven.

Decisions already taken include a reduction in staffing and the relocation of 70 per cent of staff to lower-cost locations. This follows a previous decision to consolidate regional offices in South Asia and East Asia, as well as Europe and Central Asia and the Middle East and North Africa.

These measures are projected to save the organisation around $586 million in core resources over the course of the next strategic plan. The larger proportion of cuts will be implemented at headquarter and regional office locations, to safeguard more resources for UNICEF’s work in the field.

We continue to work through a range of options to design the most effective structures and configurations that will enable the organization to continue delivering on its core – and critical – mandate of protecting the rights of children and helping them to reach their potential everywhere.

No amount of internal reform can compensate for the loss of essential external funding. Millions of children are already being affected, and the consequences will be stark. These services save lives. Their disruption will cost them.

Investing in children is not charity – it reflects security, stability and common sense. It is in everyone’s interest. When we immunize children, we help stop the global spread of disease. When we strengthen nutrition, health and learning, we reduce the forces that drive displacement and instability. When children are protected and educated, their societies are more peaceful, resilient and prosperous.

That’s why we need a renewed commitment from Member States to global financing for children that will in turn serve the interests of global prosperity, poverty reduction, peace and stability:

• Governments must protect domestic social spending and ringfence essential services for children, especially in fragile and humanitarian contexts.
• Donors and investors must prioritize children in decisions on overseas spending, debt relief, climate finance, and principled and flexible humanitarian funding.
• The international community must embrace innovative financing, public-private partnerships, and smarter delivery models.

This is not a time to retreat. It is a time to reaffirm and renew our collective commitment to the next generation. The question is not whether the world can afford to invest in every child. The question is whether it can afford not to.

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Published 8 August 2025

Updated 19 November 2025