17/12/2025
In 2025, humanitarian funding cuts reached unprecedented levels, with major donor governments sharply reducing foreign aid. Refugee women-led organizations, long under-resourced yet central to providing essential services and challenging systemic oppression, have been particularly affected.
Since March 2025, New Women Connectors, also a co-lead for the Multistakeholder Pledge in Meaningful Refugee Participation by the Global Compact of Refugees, has been researching how these organizations continue to navigate shrinking funding, political instability, and growing demands while sustaining critical support for stateless and displaced women.
Our report, ‘NO NEW CRISIS -Refugee Women-Led Organisations Remain Under-Resourced’ gathered data from over 100 respondents, representing refugee WLOs, refugee, stateless, displaced, and migrant women across 28 countries. Our work is guided by feminist principles: the design, analysis, and interpretation of findings are led by those directly impacted by funding cuts.
We have just launched the report on Monday at the Global Refugee Forum Progress Review - High Level Officials Meeting in Geneva, organized by UNHCR, .
Some of our key findings include:
📌Refugee WLOs are forced into closure or reduction of services
📌Refugee women face heightened risks to their safety and well-being
📌Despite all of these challenges, refugee women continue to lead with resilience
Our recommendations are the following:
🚨WLOs need funding that is core, flexible and multi-year
🚨The meaningful participation of refugee women must be centred in decision-making processes
🚨Solutions must address legal and structural obstacles
The message is clear: we urge donors, partners, and decision-makers to recognise, fund, and trust refugee women-led organisations - not as temporary relief providers, but as experts, leaders, and change-makers.
This report is supported by UNHCR. Our partner is the Whole World Women Association
⛓️💥 Read our full report through the link here: https://shorturl.at/c5tiA
Written and edited by: Anila Noor, Alessandra Marchand, Irene Samandar Eweis and Nurhidayah Hassan
