STATEMENT
UNHCR 93rd meeting of the Standing Committee.
Agenda Item 5a - Update on budgets and funding.
Statement by Norway delivered by Ms Therese Johansen,
Senior Advisor, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Norway
19 June 2025
Chair,
Norway would like to thank UNHCR for this sobering update on budgets and funding.
We remain concerned about the impact on UNHCR operations of the abrupt funding freeze by UNHCR’s single largest donor. We are also concerned about the consequences of significant cuts in humanitarian budgets signaled by other major donors. This is happening at the same time as the total number of displaced persons has reached an all-time high.
For Norway, our humanitarian budget remains stable. Our priorities remain the same. We will continue to be a flexible donor, trusting our partners to themselves prioritise the needs of their organisations. We will therefore continue to prioritise core support to UNHCR, and to continue to promote gender equality and protection.
We are particularly concerned to learn that as of now, protection, gender-based violence, and child protection seem to have been hit the hardest. Although we are committed to flexible funding, it might be necessary to softly earmark for parts of the response that otherwise would be disproportionally underfunded.
Given the dramatically reduced funding environment, we need to ensure that remaining humanitarian funds reach the refugees whose needs are most severe. To achieve this we see a need for common, and transparent criteria to understand the severity of needs across refugee responses.
The starting point for reprioritisation must be the humanitarian principles, particularly the principle of impartiality: humanitarian action must be carried out on the basis of need alone, giving priority to the most urgent cases.
We need UNHCR leadership to put a system in place that enables operational actors and donors to understand where needs are most severe across refugee operations.
We as donors also need to do our part. We encourage all donors to exercise good humanitarian donorship by providing predictable funding levels, and limit conditionality, to enable UNHCR to meet the needs of the most vulnerable refugees and internally displaced.
Thank you