Will Worley

What’s shaping aid policy in 2026 Big tech, shrinking funds, weird partnerships, drones and influencers, new models, climate progress, ending well: Humanitarian trends for the year ahead.

What’s shaping aid policy in 2026: @irwinloy.bsky.social and @willrworley.bsky.social on the trends driving change and disruption in the coming months ➡️

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Big Aid sticks with Boston Consulting Group despite Gaza scandal While quick to condemn the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, many groups are unwilling to distance themselves entirely from BCG.

Pressure is growing on the Boston Consulting Group for their role supporting Israeli war aims in Gaza.

But there's one group of organisations that doesn't seem to have fully made up its mind about BCG ...

... enter the United Nations and INGOs.

www.thenewhumanitarian.org/analysis/202...

Myanmar in-depth: Slow earthquake response underlines need to overhaul long-flawed international aid efforts Six weeks after a major new disaster, calls are growing to find new ways to address a host of access, funding, and structural response challenges.

-Six+ weeks since a devastating earthquake
-Millions in need
-A purported ceasefire continually violated

From aid going to armed groups to covert humanitarianism, #whatsgoingoninmyanmar?

www.thenewhumanitarian.org/analysis/202...

UK is not ‘a charity’, aid minister will tell MPs as she considers cuts Development reductions include possible axing of support for education and gender programmes

I remember a time when the Labour Party used to use my reporting on the Boris aid cuts to criticise the government

www.ft.com/content/efbc...

After years of green advocacy, NGOs are now scrubbing climate change from their websites

www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2025/04...

Great piece by my colleague, Irwin Loy.

Humanitarian data drought: The deeper damage wrought by US aid cuts It’s one thing being forced to cut aid programmes, it’s quite another not knowing where help is most urgently needed in the first place.

Everyone knows about the damage USAID cuts are doing *right now* to lifesaving programs.

But there is more pernicious, long term damage being wrought too - including to the only area for which humanitarians have had much optimism:

www.thenewhumanitarian.org/analysis/202...

GB Participation COP joint statement_for endorsement GB Participation COP: joint statement to IASC Principals A community-led “humanitarian reset” In 2016 humanitarian actors committed to launch a ‘participation revolution”, ensuring people in crisis-a...

Similar, though not identical, recs from @GroundTruthSol meeting on same topic a couple weeks ago

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Reforming humanitarianism can’t be left to today’s decision-makers The problem isn’t a “humanitarian reset” but who is pushing the button. The leadership needed to revamp the system must come from elsewhere.

"The fundamental changes needed today are too important to leave to a conclave who have been remarkably effective at preserving power, resources, and control through successive rounds of reform."

Solid recs frm @poole_lydia on big humanitarian 'reset'

www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/2025...

UK climate envoy Rachel Kyte @rkyte365 (+ COP30 CEO Ana Toni) both tell #CHevents there are "no conversations about how to pause the [global energy] transition"

When questioned on this, Kyte says important to distinguish between "signals and noise... keep calm and carry on"

For humanitarians, climate and conflict are becoming harder to separate The state of play in the climate-conflict policy space following COP29 and heading into 2025.

The effects of climate change and conflict are at the top of the risk list for humanitarians

At COP29, I took a look at where this policy landscape is at ... and where it's going next

www.thenewhumanitarian.org/analysis/202...

The loss and damage fund should open for business in 2025. Will it be fit for purpose? 2025 could see funds disbursed for the first time, but how will it work, who will benefit, and why is there so little money in its coffers?

2025 will be a big year for the nascent Loss + Damage Fund...

It's developing policy, finalising the institutional stuff, and may even do its first much needed response to a
climate disaster.

But there's a big $-shaped caveat...

My latest:

www.thenewhumanitarian.org/analysis/202...

Targeted aid killings: How Israel starved a population and sowed chaos in northern Gaza Experts say the series of Israeli attacks that violently dismantled a UN-backed humanitarian effort shows “a pattern of apparent war crimes”.

Huge investigation from @newhumanitarian.bsky.social colleagues

It's about the killings of Palestinians who helped UN aid distribution in northern Gaza, as the region approached famine earlier this year ... and the consequences of their deaths

www.thenewhumanitarian.org/investigatio...

Reporter’s diary: How Baku turned me from a COP optimist into a COP sceptic A gathering overshadowed by Trump’s re-election ended in a disappointing deal that underscores the growing headwinds the UN process faces.

I did not leave COP29 in Baku feeling optimistic.

Quite the opposite in fact.

Here's my reflections on the outcome, the $$$ machinery accompanying COP29, and what it means for int'l cooperation in the emerging geopolitical landscape:

www.thenewhumanitarian.org/analysis/202...

At a pivotal COP in Baku, humanitarians try to define their climate role Finance, adaptation, loss and damage: Humanitarians are trying to carve out a role within the climate movement. But there’s a bumpy road ahead.

Back from Baku

It felt like untangling spaghetti trying to make sense of the emerging web of links between climate and humanitarian policy at COP29.

But I think I got there in the end.

Here's my analysis:

www.thenewhumanitarian.org/analysis/202...