As we enter 2026, one truth is impossible to ignore: children around the world face the highest levels of need in modern history, just as the humanitarian system meant to protect them and their future is battling some of its greatest challenges in decades.
The events of 2025 marked a dramatic break in global humanitarian and development efforts. When the United States abruptly suspended foreign aid in January, billions of dollars disappeared overnight. Critical programs were suspended, offices were closed, and millions of people suddenly lost access to food, healthcare, education, and protection. Overnight, livelihoods that communities had depended on for decades were put at risk and children, as always, paid the highest price.
For international NGOs, the shock was immediate and severe. At Save the Children, we were forced to make some of the most difficult decisions in our 106-year history. We had to close country offices, cut thousands of staff positions and end life-saving operations. We estimate that around 11.5 million people – including 6.7 million children – would feel the immediate impacts of these cuts, while many more would be affected in the long term.
The aid cuts came at a time when children around the world were already facing major challenges, from conflict to displacement to climate change, with decades of progress at risk of being reversed.
The events are beginning. By 2025, one in five children was living in an active conflict zone where children were being killed, maimed, sexually assaulted and kidnapped in record numbers. Around 50 million children around the world are displaced from their homes. Almost half of the world’s children (around 1.12 billion) cannot afford a balanced diet and some 272 million were not in school.
These figures point to a global failure. Behind every statistic is a child whose childhood is being cut short, a childhood defined by fear, hunger, and lost potential.
For the children, the collapse of aid was not an abstract budget decision, but a deeply personal one. Health clinics closed, classrooms closed, and protective services disappeared just as violence, climate crises, and displacement intensified. Years of hard-won progress in child survival, education and rights were suddenly at risk of unraveling, leaving millions of children more vulnerable to hunger, exploitation and violence.
The crisis also revealed the fragility of the global aid system itself. When humanitarian support is concentrated among a handful of government donors, sudden political changes directly impact the lives of children. The events of 2025 demonstrated how quickly international commitments can unravel and how devastating it can be for the youngest and least protected.
However, in the midst of this turmoil, something extraordinary happened.
In many places, families, teachers, health care workers, and local organizations found ways to continue learning, provide care, and create spaces where children could still play, heal, and feel safe. These efforts underscored a simple truth: responses are stronger when they are rooted near children themselves.
There were also moments of progress. In a year marked by the decline of human rights, important legal reforms advanced the protection of children, from the ban on corporal punishment in Thailand to the criminalization of child marriage and the approval of a digital protection law in Bolivia. These achievements remind us that change is possible even in difficult times, when children’s rights are at the center of public debate and policy.
Out of the shocks of 2025 has come a moment of reckoning and an opportunity: to adapt, to innovate, towards approaches that are more sustainable, more locally led and more accountable to the people they are meant to serve. For children, this change is fundamental. Decisions made closer to communities are more likely to reflect children’s real needs and aspirations.
This period of reinvention has also revived difficult issues that can no longer be postponed. How can life support be protected from political volatility? How can funding be diversified so that children are not abandoned when a single donor withdraws? And how can children and young people participate meaningfully in the decisions that shape their future?
Innovation alone won’t save children, but it can help. When digital tools, data, and community-led design are used responsibly, they can improve access, accountability, and trust. If used incorrectly, there is a risk of deepening inequalities. The challenge is not technological: it is political and ethical.
Children don’t stop wanting to learn, play or dream because bombs fall or aid runs out. In fields, cities and neighborhoods in ruins, they organize, speak and imagine futures that adults have not been able to assure them. They remind us why our work (and our ability to adapt) is so important.
This year in Gaza I witnessed the horrors that children experience every day, while the war has lasted for more than two years and most of the Strip is covered in rubble. I saw children facing malnutrition in our healthcare clinics and heard how some now wish to die to join their parents in heaven. No child should ever live under such terror that it prefers death. They are children and their voices need to be heard.
If 2025 exposed the flaws of the old aid model, 2026 must become a turning point. A different option is possible: one that builds systems resilient to political crises, based on local leadership, and accountable to the children they claim to serve. The challenge now is to reshape our systems so that, no matter how the world changes, we can put children first, always and everywhere.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
