Q&A: More refugees, far less cash - what keeps aid workers awake

• Refugee numbers rise as budgets shrink
• Aid cuts felt from Kabul to Khartoum
• State of insecurity - the new norm?

BRUSSELS - Conflict, climate change and cuts to foreign aid will drive ever more people from their homes in coming years, tipping the world into a new state of insecurity, according to the head of the Danish Refugee Council.

In a wide-ranging sitdown with Context, Charlotte Slente ran through the triple whammy that is now facing the world's poor as western governments turn inwards just as war and rising temperatures push ever more people into need.

Slente urged philanthropists to step up and do more - but conceded there was no one big enough to plug the multi-billion-dollar gap left when President Donald Trump gutted foreign aid and Europe shuffled some of its aid spend into defence.

Despite the reduced help now open to refugees, the group expects 6.7 million more people will be on the move by the end of 2026, adding to the 122 million already displaced by climate change and conflict.

Here are extracts from our conversation with Slente, who has been forced to shutter programmes from Khartoum to Kabul.

To what extent is your organisation exposed to U.S. cuts and does this keep you awake at night?

A lot of things keep me awake these days. But yes, we are quite heavily affected. In total numbers (U.S. aid) would have been 20% of our income in 2025. That has now been almost slashed from one day to another.

We work in 40 countries around the globe, focussing on humanitarian assistance - in terms of immediate, life-saving aid and also longer-term resilience for internally displaced people living in host communities for longer periods.

Overall, we assess that humanitarian assistance for over 2 million people that we expected to reach this year is not being delivered.

So what does this mean in real terms?

In Afghanistan, we provided safe drinking water for thousands and thousands of people, allowing internally displaced people to return. That support has totally stopped.

In Colombia, we supported shelters for Venezuelan refugees coming into the country, and also mine clearance, which is extremely important in a setting of decades-long conflict. All of that has been cut.

(In) Cameroon, we delivered food aid to pregnant women and early child care for undernourished infants. That support has been cut.

In Sudan and (Democratic Republic of) Congo, major scenes of crisis at the moment, a lot of longer-term resilience work has been cut. And those are just a few examples.

What alternatives are there to U.S. aid?

There are a lot of rich people out there - philanthropists - who could speed up their game and fill that void. That is a different ball game.

But no one is capable of immediately replacing that assistance. At the same time we are seeing cuts in many other donors' support for a number of reasons, and one of those reasons is that defence budgets need resources.

I would claim that for a good security environment, you need both the hard and soft part. We have more than 120 million displaced people around the globe, more people than ever need humanitarian assistance. So this is actually the moment for speeding up (funding).

The lack of humanitarian funding for these crises will only enhance the level of conflict and displacement that we see around the world. This needs to go hand in hand, it's not either/or.

As governments shift priorities, what can be done to change attitudes around aid?

The idea of only providing humanitarian assistance in emergencies is a difficult concept to shift. But the financial crisis in this sector could actually be a window of opportunity, looking at how to become more efficient with the aid available.

There are analyses out there, that say $1 spent in preventative action saves $16 in humanitarian assistance. So there's also an economic argument for actually saving more people's lives by engaging in an anticipatory measures.

So it's about organisations like ours and many others constantly injecting this into the dialogue with our donors and the possibilities there.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

(Reporting by Joanna Gill; Editing by Lyndsay Griffiths.)