Humanitarian highlights - July 2026 update

Humanitarian needs are increasing rapidly in a challenging landscape where response capacities are under strain. In 2026, the ICRC will focus on protecting people affected by armed conflict in Israel and the occupied territories, Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan. Across these contexts, declining respect for international humanitarian law is contributing to increased violence, displacement, and the breakdown of essential services.
With your support, our teams are sustaining critical assistance. Since the start of the year, we have provided and facilitated medical care for tens of thousands of wounded and sick people in Lebanon. In Gaza, the ICRC continues delivering multiple forms of cash assistance—including emergency multipurpose cash, cash‑for‑work, group cash for IDP camps, livelihoods asset‑replacement grants, nutrition‑related cash, and conditional shelter cash—reaching more than 58,500 households. Across the Middle East, our teams continue providing food, household items, and livelihood support to hundreds of thousands of people affected by conflict.

Afghanistan remains the ICRC’s most underfunded context, with only 14% of needs covered in 2025. Communities face persistent exposure to explosive hazards, resulting in long‑term mobility needs and heightened vulnerability. Through the Physical Rehabilitation Program and in partnership with the Afghan Red Crescent Society, we provide prosthetics and orthotics, physiotherapy, mobility aids, and psychosocial support. Risk‑awareness sessions reached more than 240,000 people—over half of them children—in weapon‑contaminated areas.

Across conflict‑affected contexts, essential services are deteriorating: families face unreliable access to electricity, water, health care, and education, while weapon contamination makes routine activities—walking to school, farming, or collecting water—dangerous, and displacement and sudden shifts in violence continue to disrupt daily life. Together with our Red Cross partners, the ICRC is addressing these challenges through holistic and sustainable solutions that combine protection work, support to critical infrastructure, risk‑reduction activities, and long‑term capacity‑building to help communities manage immediate needs and strengthen resilience over time.

Your partnership enables the ICRC to remain present in these environments and deliver assistance where it is most needed.