For the tenth year running, the Democratic Republic of Congo appears on the Norwegian Refugee Council’s (NRC) annual list of top neglected displacement crises, and the neglect is deepening.
DR Congo on world's most neglected displacement crises list for tenth consecutive year
Press release
Published 04. Jun 2026
“This is a testament to the world's failure to respond to crises that are not regarded as strategically important for rich countries,” said NRC’s Secretary General Jan Egeland. “Millions of people are being abandoned because we have chosen not to act, not because we cannot. The uncomfortable truth is that this neglect is a choice, and something we can choose to end.”
In 2025, just 27.4 per cent of the funding required to respond to the crisis in DR Congo was provided, the lowest rate in 10 years, leaving over 21 million people in need with no or drastically reduced assistance. A decade ago, the international community was providing 55 US dollars per person in need in DR Congo. Today that figure has collapsed to under 33 US dollars.
Countries such as Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Mali and Nigeria have all featured on the list six or more times, pointing to a systemic pattern of deliberate neglect rather than isolated failure.
“Donor governments have been presented with evidence of neglect, year after year. Yet those in power still choose to prioritise military and strategic investments and underfund, deprioritise and sideline the victims of these crises. It is a failure of our humanity,” said Egeland.
The report is the tenth edition of NRC's Neglected Displacement Crises Report, tracking how responses continue to fall short of the scale of suffering.
Sudan tops the list
The 10 most neglected crises for 2025 are Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Honduras, Ecuador, Cameroon, Nigeria and Mozambique, spanning three continents and tens of millions of people the world continues to ignore.
The Neglected Displacement Crises Report assesses each crisis across four indicators: media coverage, funding, political attention, and scale of displacement. A lower score indicates a larger gap between the scale of human suffering and the adequacy of international response.
Sudan tops this year's list. More than 9 million people are internally displaced, and up to 4 million have fled to neighbouring countries. Nearly 19.5 million people inside Sudan are facing hunger, yet the international response remains wholly inadequate to that scale of suffering.
“It is incomprehensible that a displacement crisis of similar proportions to the crises in Syria and Ukraine at their peak can continue to worsen almost unnoticed,” Egeland said. “Just as needs in Sudan skyrocketed last year and famine kept spreading, the funding was cut. Many displaced people receive no international support and are left to beg for assistance from other displaced people who no longer have anything more to share.”
A decade of the same pattern
Since NRC began publishing this report 10 years ago, 27 crises across four continents have appeared on the list, and the pattern is unambiguous. The African continent features the most consistently. From the Sahel region to the Horn of Africa, from the Great Lakes to West Africa, many of these are cases of prolonged or repeated displacement. Across the board, neglect coincides with access restrictions for humanitarians. With rare exceptions, the crises that were ignored a decade ago are still being ignored today. In DR Congo, the Ebola outbreak now spreading across eastern parts of the country — declared a public health emergency of international concern by WHO in May 2026 — is unfolding in communities already devastated by years of displacement and humanitarian neglect.
“Behind every statistic in eastern DR Congo are families who have endured years of violence, repeated displacement, and deep uncertainty about their future,” said Eric Batonon, NRC’s country director in the Democratic Republic of Congo. “While attention shifts from one global emergency to another, millions of Congolese continue to live without adequate protection, assistance, or hope. The fact that DR Congo remains among the world’s most neglected crises for the tenth consecutive year should serve as a wake-up call to the international community.”
What NRC is calling for
The gap between needs and available humanitarian funding is increasing as a result of brutal humanitarian funding cuts. This is affecting the neglected crises particularly hard, as these crises are already characterised by less available funding per person in need.
NRC urges donor governments to fund crises based on humanitarian need and scale of displacement, not geopolitical interest. It calls on political leaders and diplomats to engage seriously with the root causes of protracted displacement, many of which persist precisely because they are seen as having little geopolitical importance. It also calls on media organisations to report on these crises with the consistency and depth they demand as ongoing emergencies.
“The crises ignored today will demand a larger, costlier and more complex response tomorrow,” said Egeland. “The world does not lack for skills nor resources. Be it arranging football World Cups, or pioneering space exploration: our ability to organise and overcome challenges is almost without limit. We can and must finally take the decision to end the neglect that has caused such deep suffering for millions of people”.
Multimedia:
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B-roll and photos from all countries on the list are available to download for free use here.
Facts and figures:
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Each year, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) publishes a list of the ten most neglected displacement crises in the world. The purpose is to focus on the plight of people whose suffering rarely makes international headlines, who receive no or inadequate assistance, and who rarely become the centre of attention for international diplomacy efforts. The report is available here.
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The neglected displacement crises list for 2025 analyses 35 displacement crises based on four criteria: lack of funding, lack of media attention, lack of effective international political and diplomatic initiatives, and scale of displacement. Full details of the methodology can be found here.
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The full list in order this year is: Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Honduras, Ecuador, Cameroon, Nigeria and Mozambique.
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The international community, provided an average of less than 40 US dollars per person in need across the ten most neglected displacement crises through the humanitarian appeals last year, compared to an average of more than 52 US dollars per person in need overall (Global Humanitarian Overview 2025, OCHA FTS). Ten years ago the comparable figures were an average of 84.5 US dollars per person in need across the ten most neglected displacement crises, compared to 94.5 US dollars per person in need for the global humanitarian appeals overall (OCHA FTS, Global Humanitarian Overview 2016).
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DR Congo has appeared on this list every year since it was first published in 2016. It topped the list three times, in 2017, 2020 and 2021. It ranked 2nd in 2016, 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2025, 3rd in 2023, and 8th in 2024.
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Cameroon has appeared eight times consecutively since 2018, ranking 1st in 2024, 2019 and 2018, 2nd in 2023 and 2020, 3rd in 2021, and 8th in 2022 and 2025.
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Mali had seven appearances in as many consecutive years (2018–2024). Ranked 4th in 2023, 5th in 2024, 6th in 2019 and 2021, 7th in 2018 and 2022, and 10th in 2020.
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Burkina Faso has appeared on this list for six consecutive years from 2019 to 2024. It ranked 4th in 2024, 1st in 2023 and 2022, 2nd in 2021, 7th in 2020, and 3rd in 2019. Nigeria was on the list for six times: 5th in 2016, 6th in 2020, 8th in 2019 and 2021, 9th in 2025, and 10th in 2017. Central African Republic has appeared six times. It ranked 1st in 2016, 3rd in 2017 and 2018, 9th in 2019 and 2020, and 8th in 2023.
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Yemen appears for the third time, this year in 4th position, after ranking 6th and 8th in 2016 and 2017 respectively.
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Mozambique appears on this list for the second consecutive time, ranking 3rd in 2024 and 10th in 2025.
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Globally in 2025, just 15.95 billion US dollars in humanitarian funding was received against a total of 45.47 billion US dollars in requirements. This left a global funding gap of 29.5 billion US dollars (64.9%) (UN OCHA).
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Total military spending for 2025 reached 2.63 trillion US dollars, equal to roughly 7.2 billion US dollars per day (IISS). With the global humanitarian funding gap at 29.5 billion US dollars, this is equal to 4.1 days, or 1.12 per cent, of global military spending in 2025.
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Following a 90-day aid suspension and subsequent legislative actions in early 2025, the US slashed its Official Development Assistance (ODA) from roughly 63 billion US dollars in 2024 to just under 29 billion US dollars in 2025. This included reducing its Global Fund pledge from 6 billion to 4.6 billion US dollars (Al Jazeera; Devex).
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The UK government confirmed it is cutting ODA from 0.5 per cent to 0.3 per cent of Gross National Income (GNI) by 2027, a nearly 40 per cent reduction, to divert funds toward increasing defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP (Center for Global Development; Development Aid; Bond).
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In its 2025 budget, Germany halved its funds for emergency humanitarian aid and cut its overall international development budget by approximately 8 per cent (DW News; Donor Tracker; Welthungerhilfe).
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The French government announced a reduction in public development assistance to 3.7 billion Euros for 2026, representing a 700 million Euro cut from previous projections to address its public deficit (Focus 2030; Donor Tracker).
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The Dutch government announced a significant 2.4 billion Euro cut in development aid set to begin in 2027 (Donor Tracker).
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Total ODA from OECD donors dropped by 23.1 per cent in 2025, the largest single-year contraction on record (OECD).
For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact:
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Norwegian Refugee Council's global media hotline: media@nrc.no,
+47 905 623 29