Despite generous support from our donors, 50 per cent of UNICEF’s response remained unfunded in 2025. Urgent additional support is needed in 2026 to sustain and scale lifesaving services for the most vulnerable children.
In 2025, the MENA region faced overlapping crises including conflict, displacement, economic collapse, disease outbreaks, and climate shocks, placing children at risk and disrupting access to services.
Middle East and North Africa offers a comprehensive, evidence-based analysis of one of the world’s most complex and dynamic mobility landscapes where labour migration, protracted displacement, environmental stressors and socioeconomic transitions converge.
Hurricane Melissa, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the Atlantic, hit southwestern Jamaica on 28 October as a Category 5 system—the worst hurricane to hit the area since 1988—before crossing into eastern Cuba as a Category 3 the following day.
In September, the security situation in Darfur and Kordofan States remained highly volatile and unpredictable, marked by intensified military confrontations, drone strikes, aerial bombardments and increasing intercommunal tension, leading to widespread insecurity, civilian displacement and growing humanitarian needs.
Since the outbreak of armed conflict in Sudan on 15 April 2023, Africa Region faced a large-scale humanitarian crisis marked by one of the most significant displacement movements in recent years. Millions of people fled the violence, crossing into Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Uganda.
Despite urgent needs, 62 per cent of UNICEF’s response remains unfunded. Without timely support, the most vulnerable children risk missing access to critical, lifesaving services.
According to a statement by the UN Spokesperson, and the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, civilians remain cut off without access to food and clean water, and public health is deteriorating amid outbreaks of diseases like cholera.
There are now 12.0 million forcibly displaced due to the outbreak of conflict in Sudan since April 2023, including 7.7 million internally and 4.1 million in neighbouring countries.
Latest data from IOM’s Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) shows a 13% drop in the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Sudan since January 2025, now standing at 10.1 million.
In June 2025, WFP assisted an estimated 3.6 million people across all activities. Of those assisted, 1.6 million people were in famine and risk of famine (RoF) areas in Sudan.
WFP is working to scale up assistance in Sudan for 7 million people by mid-year in Sudan. In Libya, in February, WFP distributed food assistance to 4,285 individuals and reached 342 children under five and 125 pregnant and breastfeeding women and girls.
Since October 7, 2023, hostilities in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank have escalated to unprecedented levels, resulting in immense humanitarian needs in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt).
Over the past 14 months, more than 44,000 Palestinians — mostly women and children — have been killed in Gaza. Nearly all of Gaza’s residents have been displaced — many multiple times.
On 18 October 2023, IFRC launched the Middle East Crisis Emergency Appeal to support the coordination and scale-up of response to the crisis, in addition to the readiness activities in neighbouring countries.
