Readers, it is for you that we are publishing this edition on the eve of the Christmas and New Year holidays, thanking you for your loyalty.
At the end of this year, I wish to inform you that we have the project to make the Défis Humanitaires review evolve.
But why, you will say to me?
For two essential reasons, one humanitarian and the other geopolitical, as they are so closely linked and that we are going to analyse together now.
Because the world has shifted between 2022 and 2025, putting an end to the one born after the Second World War, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and of the USSR and following the attack against the World Trade Center.
The main events which provoked it are the Russian attack against Ukraine and the second election of Donald Trump.
A world in rupture.
We have changed historical period and global agenda for a long time, and after the publication in Défis Humanitaires since the beginning of more than 500 articles, we must now adapt our review to the new issues, risks and hopes in order to better fulfil our mission of information, analysis, anticipation, mobilisation, notably to defend humanitarian action brutally weakened this year.
In a world more interconnected and interdependent than ever, we are experiencing multiple fractures which reinforce one another.
High-intensity war in Ukraine, 120 major conflicts increasing in the world, Donald Trump MAGA isolationist unpredictable but constant in his will to change the rules, Russia of Vladimir Putin aggressive and determined, imperial expansionist China, Global South critical and demanding, UN paralysed, Europe destabilised on the defensive, France weakened and everywhere military budgets that explode with 2718 billion dollars of world expenditures in 2024, increasing by 9.4% compared to 2023.
But also, crisis of liberal democracy, overheating of the climate, threat to biodiversity, demographic explosion in Africa, manipulated information and the humanitarian aid of developed States that falls brutally this year for 305 million human beings in danger in the world!
This nevertheless hides numerous human progress which are masked, even annihilated, by this spiral of the change of era: health, education, life expectancy, research, ….
A pre-war world?
The risk of war is increasing, particularly in Europe and in Asia-Pacific, and becomes a collective existential issue.
The German Minister of Defence, David Pistorius, social-democrat, declares in the German Parliament: “We must be ready for war by 2029.”
The United States Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, states: “We are living a 1939 moment.”
General Fabien Mandon, Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces in France, announces that we must be ready within 3 to 4 years to face an attack by Russia in Europe.
Yet, we know well from experience, war is the main cause of humanitarian aid!
It is in this context that the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, announced the creation of a voluntary military service approved by 81% of the French (IFOP study for LCI of 26.11.2025) when 73% of them (Ipsos-BVA-Cesi poll) fear the repercussions of the war in Ukraine in France itself.
After 40 months of war in Ukraine covered daily by the media, everyone can form an idea of the human consequences that this means in a world where 10% of the world population is now exposed to war.
Humanitarian and development aid that collapses!
It is in a context where humanitarian needs have never been so numerous and where they will increase, that developed countries financing Official Development Assistance (ODA) have decided, for the majority of them, to reduce on average by at least 50% their support.
This means, on a 2024 budget estimated at 212.1 billion dollars, a cut of nearly 105 billion each year.
What will be the direct and indirect consequences in matters of health, food, training, employment, partnership, instability, tensions, migratory movement, confidence and hope?
This period of deep rupture in international relations, these risks of war, must they for all that and without any anticipation in the long term, lead to such attrition of international aid at the risk of fuelling multiple underlying tensions and increasing the number and intensity of conflicts!
Is it really a good “realpolitik” calculation or a too hasty defensive reflex?
More concretely, international humanitarian aid will be in 2025 about 20.8 billion dollars instead of the 45.58 billion necessary!
To compare with the 37 billion USD mobilised in 2023 and the 43.3 in 2022.
We are going backwards and thus cancelling 10 years of commitment and progress to save lives and seek peace.
If we take the case of France, the humanitarian aid budget will be in 2025 (source FTS OCHA) 348 million euros against the one billion euros foreseen not long ago in the trajectory of the French government.
If we take the support of public authorities to development and humanitarian NGOs, it was 1.3 billion euros in 2023 and it is 497 million euros (source CHD) in the 2026 finance bill!
This massive and rapid disengagement of the State will provoke a chain cascade of harmful consequences:
abandonment of essential aid projects, suppression of posts and skills in associations, possible disappearance in the long term of certain associations.
Yet, according to a Harris Interactive survey, two thirds of the French are in favour of international solidarity!
The project that we propose to you.
For the first time in a long time, humanitarian aid falls dangerously for populations in danger!
We can no longer speak and write as before!
Humanitarian media are rare and many people continue to think and act as before!
We must adapt in order to seek to convince political decision-makers of the gravity of the consequences of aid cuts decided too quickly.
We must accelerate the ways and means to improve by ourselves humanitarian aid through innovation, coordination, pooling, cooperation between actors, partnership with companies and local authorities, philanthropy, communication aimed at the public and donors.
To this end, we invite our readers, our friends and donors to support our approach to make it simply possible.
We have the project to:
Make our editorial line evolve by broadening it to questions that impact humanitarian aid, in particular between the national and the international, of which we see how much they are linked when budgets collapse.
Adapt the layout towards a press-media equipped with new functionalities generating more visibility and readers.
Strengthen our editorial assistance for more content and impact to mobilise public opinion, decision-makers and influence public policies.
To succeed in this humanitarian project, I need the generous support of our readers who, thanks to their donation (faireundon), can make it possible and imminent.
In this traditional end-of-year donation period which benefits from a tax deduction (66% of the amount of your donation is deductible), I invite you to participate and support this project of your review by making a donation (faireundon) for which I personally thank you warmly. A big thank you.
I wish you wonderful end-of-year celebrations.
Alain Boinet.
PS/ You will receive a tax receipt in the month of January for the tax deduction of your donation (faireundon). A big thank you and happy Christmas and New Year holidays.