The humanitarian sector is going through one of the biggest shake-ups in a generation. Known as the Humanitarian Reset, the effort aims to make the system more nationally owned, better coordinated, and more efficient. But recent evidence points to the risk of the Reset overlooking accountability to children, adolescents and youth precisely as their needs are rising and funding is falling.
Young people know what they need. Are we listening?
Ask children and young people in crisis settings what matters most, and the answers are remarkably consistent: education, food and livelihoods, protection from harm, and a real say in decisions that affect their lives. Research from the Norwegian Refugee Council, Plan International, and Save the Children which draws on dozens of consultations across countries including Mali, Nigeria, Uganda and Ukraine confirms these priorities.
However, when you look at how humanitarian plans are actually funded, these same priorities are among the least resourced. Education and protection routinely fall to the bottom of the list. For example, education – often cited as a number one priority by children - has received less than 1% of funding allocations from Country Based Pooled Funds this year. Country based pooled funds, managed by the UN, are pots of funding that are established when an emergency occurs or when an existing crisis deteriorates. Services are shrinking precisely as young people are asking, more insistently than ever, to be heard.
The sharp and rapid funding cuts that we have seen over the last year have real-life impacts, particularly for children and young people. Humanitarian response includes specialised and lifesaving services, including safe spaces to identify and triage those most at risk, including unaccompanied and separated children, survivors of trafficking, and children associated with armed forces and groups, as well as mechanisms specifically designed to monitor and report on serious violations against children in conflict. These depend on steady presence and safe access, both of which are under strain as funding tightens.
We are also concerned about an emerging disconnect between global commitments and country-level practice within the humanitarian reset. While Education in Emergencies continues to be recognised as eligible within lifesaving humanitarian funding, in some contexts implementing partners are receiving clear signals to deprioritise education in favour of a narrower set of interventions considered “core lifesaving”. This risks creating, in practice, a hierarchy of humanitarian needs that fails to recognise the lifesaving and protective role education plays for children in crisis.
Experience has shown us that both child protection and education in emergencies must be treated as essential and the risks of rushed handover must be seriously considered at each phase of reform. Any reform of the humanitarian system must be measured by its capacity to reduce risks to children, not by structural or administrative efficiency alone. Without careful, country-by-country evaluation of context and readiness, there is a real risk of setbacks in child protection, an increase in child rights violations, and the erosion of hard-won progress for children.
A movement demanding more than a seat at the table
A youth-led campaign, #ChangeTheCode has spent the past year building a coalition of youth organisations, civil society groups and international NGOs, drawing on regional consultations, a Global Youth Manifesto and the Global Youth Humanitarian Summit to bring young people's experiences and demands into humanitarian reform discussions. Following an open challenge from Emergency Relief Coordinator, Tom Fletcher, #ChangeTheCode advocates are also now engaging directly with OCHA to help shape the Reset itself.
Carla, a Syrian youth advocate and #ChangeTheCode representative, told us:
Youth-led organisations are already carrying out sustained response and recovery work, but very little funding reaches them directly. It often passes through several intermediaries. By the time it reaches the local level, the priorities and leadership arrangements have already been decided.
Their demands are concrete: guaranteed seats for young people in coordination and decision-making spaces, co-leadership (not just consultation) in how needs are assessed and programmes are designed, predictable multi-year funding that reaches youth-led groups, including those led by young women and LGBTQI+ people, and public reporting that shows whether young people's input actually changes anything.
We also heard from Sahra, a youth and climate advocate from Somalia and member of the Adolescents and Youth Advisory Group (AYAG) for Save the Children Denmark. She shared her reflections on meaningful youth participation and made clear that the difference between being consulted and being included is the difference between a system that talks about accountability and one that practises it. She told us:
Being present is not the same as being included. Meaningful youth engagement goes beyond inviting young people to attend, it is about involving us from the beginning. We don’t want to just sit in the room, we want a voice in what happens in the room.
This message is timely, as the broader humanitarian system has updated how it makes decisions about who is best placed to deliver in emergencies. New guidance, endorsed this year by global humanitarian leadership, outlines foundational principles to advance a more “people centred” approach to humanitarian action, including accountability to affected populations and local and national leadership. This new focus opens the door for greater consideration of youth-led organisations to be better reflected in response planning and delivery.
What needs to happen now
As the Reset progresses, Member States, donors and all humanitarian actors across the system have a real opportunity to make sure reform strengthens accountability to children and youth in humanitarian settings, rather than eroding it by default.
That means:
- Backing real participation — funded, formal mechanisms for young people to help shape coordination and planning, with transparent reporting on how their input actually changes decisions.
- Protecting funding for what children and youth say matters — the way the humanitarian system strives to respond should be guided by total need, not funding available. This means scrutinising how prioritisation decisions are made and ensuring the priorities of children and young people are not pushed to the back of the queue.
A Reset worth measuring by more than efficiency
The Humanitarian Reset has a chance to genuinely rebuild the legitimacy of a system that exists, ultimately, to protect people. But legitimacy is not won through smoother coordination or leaner budgets alone. It will be measured by something simpler and harder: whether children, adolescents and young people in crisis are safer, better supported, and genuinely part of the decisions that shape their lives.
