• UN funding falls to 10-year low, less than 1/3 of appeal met.
• Gaza, Syria and Sudan need most support for 2026.
• US remains top donor even after drastic aid cuts.
  

The United Nations on Monday appealed for an aid budget only half the size of what it had hoped for this year, acknowledging a plunge in donor funding at a time when humanitarian needs have never been greater.

By its own admission, the $23 billion UN appeal will shut out tens of millions of people in urgent need of help as falling support has forced it to prioritise only the most desperate.

The funding cuts come on top of other challenges for aid agencies that include security risks to staff in conflict zones and a lack of access.

“It’s the cuts ultimately that are forcing us into these tough, tough, brutal choices that we’re having to make,” UN aid chief Tom Fletcher told reporters.

“We are overstretched, underfunded, and under attack,” he said. “And we drive the ambulance towards the fire. On your behalf. But we are also now being asked to put the fire out. And there is not enough water in the tank. And we’re being shot at.”

A year ago, the UN sought some $47 billion for 2025 – a figure that was later pared back as the scale of aid cuts by US President Donald Trump, as well as other top Western donors such as Germany, began to emerge.

November figures showed it had received only $12 billion so far, the lowest in 10 years, covering just over a quarter of needs.

Next year’s $23 billion plan identifies 87 million people deemed as priority cases whose lives are on the line. Yet it says around a quarter of a billion need urgent assistance, and that it will aim to help 135 million of them at a cost of $33 billion – if it has the means.

The biggest single appeal of $4 billion is for the occupied Palestinian territories. Most of that is for Gaza, devastated by the two-year Israel-Hamas conflict, which has left nearly all of its 2.3 million inhabitants homeless and dependent on aid.

Second is Sudan, followed by Syria.

Fletcher said humanitarian groups faced a bleak scenario of growing hunger, spreading disease and record violence.

“(The appeal) is laser-focused on saving lives where the shocks hit hardest: wars, climate disasters, earthquakes, epidemics, crop failures,” he said.

UN humanitarian agencies are overwhelmingly reliant on voluntary donations by Western donors, with the United States by far the top historical donor.

UN data showed it continued to hold the number one spot in 2025 despite Trump’s cuts but that its share had shrunk from over a third of the total to 15.6% this year.

• Army received reports of attack on soldiers with fire weapons: Thai army.
• Thailand begins “using aircraft to strike military targets in several areas”.
• Cambodia alleges Thailand fired “multiple shots at Tamone Thom temple”.

Thailand launched air strikes on its neighbour Cambodia on Monday, the Thai army said, with both sides trading blame for the latest eruption of fighting on their disputed border which killed a Thai soldier.

After Cambodian troops fired on Thai forces early Monday morning in Ubon Ratchathani province, “the Army received reports that Thai soldiers were attacked with supporting fire weapons, resulting in one soldier killed and four wounded”, Thai army spokesman Winthai Suvaree said in a statement.

Winthai also said Thailand had begun “using aircraft to strike military targets in several areas” to suppress attacks by Cambodian forces.

Cambodia’s defence ministry spokeswoman Maly Socheata said Thai forces launched an attack on Cambodian troops in the border provinces of Preah Vihear and Oddar Meanchey early Monday morning, accusing Thailand of “firing multiple shots with tanks at Tamone Thom temple” and other areas near Preah Vihear temple.

She said Cambodia did not retaliate.

Met Measpheakdey, a Cambodian spokesman for the Oddar Meanchey provincial administration, said gunfire was reported in the areas of the centuries-old Tamone Thom and Ta Krabei temples, and a “number of villagers who live near the border are fleeing to safety”.

Thailand’s Second Army Region said in a statement that around 35,000 people in Thailand have been evacuated from areas along the border with Cambodia since the renewed fighting.

Both sides reported a brief skirmish on Sunday, which Thailand’s military had said left two soldiers wounded.

Five days of clashes erupted between Thailand and Cambodia this summer, killing 43 people and displacing around 300,000 before a truce took effect.

KYIV: Talks with US representatives on a peace plan for Ukraine have been constructive but not easy, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday ahead of his planned consultations with European leaders in coming days.

Zelenskiy held a call on Saturday with US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and is expected to meet French, British and German leaders on Monday in London. Further talks are planned in Brussels.

“The American representatives know the basic Ukrainian positions,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address. “The conversation was constructive, although not easy.”

Trump has said that ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, now nearing its fourth year and the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War Two, remains his toughest foreign policy challenge.

Despite US mediation and periodic high-level contacts, progress in the peace talks has been slow, with disputes over security guarantees for Kyiv and the status of Russian-occupied territory still unresolved.

Moscow says it is open to negotiations and blames Kyiv and the West for blocking peace, while Ukraine and its allies say Russia is stalling and using diplomacy to entrench its gains.

European leaders have backed a step-by-step diplomatic process for Ukraine, tied to long-term security guarantees and sustained military aid. Trump, however, has focused on rapid deal-making and burden-sharing, and diplomats warn that any talks remain fragile and vulnerable to shifts in US politics.