10 emergencies that need more support in 2026

Around the world, children caught in conflict and disaster face challenges they didn’t create and they cannot control. Their lives are being uprooted by violence, the threat of famine and extreme weather. In many places, the basic services children need to survive – like healthcare and education – have failed or are inaccessible.

We know how to reach these children. Whether it’s delivering life-saving supplies, creating safe spaces to learn or providing safe water, UNICEF is on the ground to assist families in the greatest need.

But even as the needs have soared, the funding situation remains bleak. Across UNICEF’s nutrition programming alone, a 72 per cent funding gap in 2025 forced cuts in 20 priority countries. Here are 10 emergencies that must not be overlooked in 2026: 

Afghanistan | Bangladesh | Burkina Faso | Colombia | Haiti 

Latin America | Myanmar | Somalia | South Sudan | Syrian refugee response 

Afghanistan

Bangladesh faces a ‘double emergency’ of a protracted refugee crisis and intensifying climate-driven disasters. An estimated 4.4 million people require humanitarian assistance, including 1.2 million Rohingya refugees living in the world’s largest refugee settlement. The lack of durable solutions and escalating conflict in neighbouring Myanmar continue to drive new displacement and further strain already overstretched services. Beyond the camps, millions of Bangladeshi children face a relentless cycle of extreme weather that routinely disrupts their education and threatens their access to safe water and healthcare.

Despite funding cuts in 2025, UNICEF continued to deliver education services for Rohingya refugees and host community children in Cox’s Bazar and Bhasan Char, including building the first fire-resistant and climate-resilient school in the refugee camps to support safe learning for children.

In 2026, UNICEF’s work in Bangladesh will include:

• Expanding access to essential healthcare: Ensuring more than 450,000 children and women can access primary healthcare services through UNICEF-supported facilities.
• Combatting child malnutrition: Screening over 320,000 children for wasting – the most immediate, visible and life-threatening form of malnutrition. Children with wasting are too thin and their immune systems are weak, leaving them vulnerable to developmental delays, disease and death.

• Protecting children from violence and distress: Providing community-based mental health and psychosocial support to over 670,000 children, adolescents, and caregivers. 

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Burkina Faso

Armed conflict, complex migration flows and disasters have left some 3.7 million children requiring humanitarian assistance. The situation deteriorated sharply in 2025 as the country’s decades-long armed conflict intensified, with a child recruited into armed groups every 20 hours and schools increasingly caught in the crossfire. The prolonged violence and loss of access to essential services have disrupted education, leaving more than 900,000 children out of school across the country.

Despite the immense challenges, UNICEF continued to deliver life-saving support throughout 2025. Tens of thousands of children and adolescents were reached with critical water, sanitation and hygiene supplies, as well as nutritional support including micronutrient powder. As the number of incidents involving anti-personnel mines and unexploded ordnance have soared in Colombia, UNICEF has worked with teachers and local partners to strengthen mine and explosive ordnance risk education in schools and communities.

In 2026, UNICEF’s work in Colombia will include:

• Supporting continued learning: Enabling more than 144,000 children to access formal or non-formal education, including early childhood services and psychosocial support for students and teachers in conflict-affected zones. 
• Protecting children from violence and distress: Reaching 58,000 children and caregivers with community-based mental health and psychosocial support.

• Ensuring access to safe water and sanitation: Providing around 40,000 people with a sufficient quantity and quality of safe water and critical hygiene supplies. In coordination with local emergency committees and partners, UNICEF will restore essential services and build community capacity for timely and life-saving responses. 

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Haiti

In 2026, almost 4 million children and adolescents in Latin America and the Caribbean will need humanitarian assistance due to the combined impacts of armed violence and unsafe migration. Migrants and displaced children are increasingly at risk of exploitation, family separation, recruitment by armed groups and psychological distress. Meanwhile, countries across the region are facing unprecedented numbers of fatalities due to armed violence, with 1 in 10 deaths the result of homicide.

Despite the volatile conditions, UNICEF and partners continued to deliver life-saving support in 2025, providing hundreds of thousands of children with psychosocial care, nutrition screenings, and essential hygiene supplies, while adapting services to meet the needs of families on both northbound and an increasing number of southbound journeys.

In 2026, UNICEF’s work in Latin America will include:

• Expanding access to essential healthcare: Ensuring around 290,000 children and women can access primary healthcare services through UNICEF-supported facilities.
• Protecting children from violence and distress: Providing community-based mental health and psychosocial support to around 470,000 children, adolescents, and caregivers.

• Ensuring access to safe water and sanitation: Reaching more than 640,000 people with a sufficient quantity and quality of safe water.

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Myanmar

Climate-related shocks and a fragile security and political environment will likely leave an estimated 3 million children in need of humanitarian assistance in 2026. Meanwhile, low vaccination coverage, poor water, sanitation and hygiene conditions, and gender barriers to healthcare have driven epidemics and communicable diseases across Somalia.   

Despite significant funding constraints, UNICEF sustained critical humanitarian operations, reaching tens of thousands of vulnerable children and their families with lifesaving services in priority districts, with a focus on fostering community-based solutions. In collaboration with its local partners, UNICEF is also spearheading the gradual rollout of a newly developed curriculum tailored to the unique needs of adolescent girls, helping them to step into spaces of learning, leadership and empowerment.

In 2026, UNICEF’s work in Somalia will include:

• Expanding life-saving healthcare: Ensuring 815,000 children and women can access primary healthcare services – a critical priority as the country’s health system faces a potential 35 per cent reduction in functioning facilities by mid-2026 due to extreme funding shortfalls.
• Treating severe child wasting: Providing life-saving therapeutic treatment for 420,000 children suffering from severe acute malnutrition.

• Safeguarding children from violence: Providing community-based mental health and psychosocial support to 116,000 children and caregivers. This work includes specialized case management for survivors of gender-based violence and the reintegration of children formerly associated with armed groups. 

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South Sudan

Fifteen years into the Syrian crisis, the situation remains one of the world’s largest displacement emergencies, with millions of children requiring humanitarian assistance across Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Türkiye. While host governments have shown immense generosity, years of protracted displacement combined with slow economic growth and high debt and inflation continue to strain host countries’ capacity to provide essential services.

In 2025, UNICEF continued to deliver integrated services to millions of children and families across the region even as it adapted its approach to the evolving context in Syria. This included providing critical primary healthcare and immunization and maintaining essential water and sanitation services in both camp and host-community settings while also supporting areas where children and families are returning. With the start of the new academic year in 2025, UNICEF also continued to support returnees and children with disabilities to access inclusive, quality education. In Aleppo, for example, UNICEF and partners ran awareness sessions to promote inclusive schooling, recognizing that access to formal education for many children with disabilities remains limited. 

In 2026, UNICEF’s work for Syrian refugees will include a focus on sustaining life-saving assistance while strengthening conditions for safe return, reintegration and recovery, including:

• Expanding access to essential healthcare: Ensuring more than 656,000 children and women can access primary healthcare services through UNICEF-supported facilities.
• Ensuring the right to education: Reaching 1.2 million children with access to formal or non-formal education, including early learning and vocational pathways for adolescents.
• Providing safe water and sanitation: Reaching 1.4 million people with a sufficient quantity and quality of safe water and essential hygiene services.
• A dual approach: Combining humanitarian response with systems strengthening, working with authorities to rebuild essential services, strengthening social cohesion and supporting durable solutions for displaced children and families.