UN refugee agency shrinks cash assistance program amid funding crisis

Citing funding shortfall, the United Nations refugee agency in Egypt announced this week it would suspend all assessment interviews for refugees applying for financial support from the organization.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is among the scores of humanitarian organizations and projects, in Egypt and beyond, affected by the United States’s foreign aid cuts. The cuts have trickled down to impact the availability of services provided to millions of beneficiaries in Egypt, including hundreds of thousands of refugees.

“The agency’s funding crisis extended into its cash assistance program, which was shrunk,” Christine Beshay, UNHCR external relations officer in Egypt, told Mada Masr.

Eligible families currently receive LE1,100-LE1,200 in assistance per month, depending on the size of their family, Beshay explained. She said the cash benefits can be used to pay for rent or food but cannot cover a family’s total expenditure.

Though the UN agency doesn’t intend to suspend the cash assistance program altogether, cutbacks will likely mean fewer people can benefit from it, she added, and will eventually affect the amount received by each person. 

Cash assistance has already been suspended for a number of beneficiaries, Beshay confirmed. Any applicants who have recently been granted refugee status are immediately placed on the waiting list for cash assistance assessment interviews.

“We are unfortunately unable to assist new beneficiaries given the long waiting list, it has to be a very urgent case to receive an exception,” she noted.

She noted that there are currently thousands of families on the program’s waiting list, adding that “without additional funding, a bigger issue will arise.” 

In its attempt to cut costs, the agency has stopped working with a third-party organization that used to conduct vulnerability assessments for cash assistance applicants, relying instead on different types of case referrals, she continued. 

In March, UNHCR’s funding crisis also led to the suspension of the medical services it supported for the almost 1 million registered refugees in the country, with the exception of life-saving care, halting the provision of cancer treatments, heart surgery and medication for chronic diseases, such as diabetes and hypertension, for nearly 200,000 beneficiaries.  

This crisis follows US President Donald Trump’s decision in January to freeze US international aid for 90 days and terminate thousands of US Agency for International Development (USAID) projects, affecting thousands of humanitarian aid and development programs across the globe. 

Apart from the shockwaves caused by Trump’s decisions, global humanitarian funding has been decreasing across the board, the agency previously told Mada Masr, with many donors cutting their contributions.

When announcing the suspension of its medical services, UNHCR noted that it had planned to raise $135 million in funding last year to support its services in Egypt throughout 2025, but received less than half of that amount.

The agency’s latest factsheet also shows it has only raised 16 percent of the targeted funding for this year so far.

Some of the most vulnerable people in Egypt rely on UN support, including Sudanese refugees who were displaced north by the war in their country. Egypt has absorbed over 1.5 million Sudanese refugees since the war began in April 2023, including those registered by the UNHCR.

However, the country has since become increasingly hostile to refugees, with Egyptian officials repeatedly stating that the government cannot continue to provide services to refugees and foreign “guests” indefinitely.

A new bill on refugee affairs currently making its way through the legislature would hand many of the functions currently performed by the UN over to the government, including the discretion to grant refugee status. It will also codify prohibitions on certain rights and freedoms for registered refugees.