UN sounds alarm on funding cuts for Egypt’s vulnerable

“The time for small projects, projectized approach, is gone,” says Elena Panova, the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Egypt, underscoring the urgent need for large-scale, government-led initiatives to confront the country’s mounting development challenges.

Speaking during an interview in Doha, Qatar, Panova stressed that her primary role is to steer the UN team in supporting Egypt’s efforts to accelerate progress on the sustainable development agenda. She noted that Egypt’s strong commitment to multilateralism has positioned the UN to work closely with national authorities at a time when global uncertainty is reshaping development priorities.

“As United Nations coordinator in Egypt, my main role, and of course priority, is to lead the team to support the country in accelerating the sustainable development agenda,” she explained. Egypt’s cooperative stance, she added, enables the UN to contribute meaningfully amid “geopolitical shifts, climate challenges, rising inequalities, and technological disruption.”

But accelerating progress comes with financial strain. Panova highlighted the growing pressures on development financing, pointing out that global official development assistance (ODA) is in decline. “The entire landscape of financing for development is shifting,” she said, noting that UN programs in Egypt have absorbed an 87 million cut — a shortfall that has hit the most vulnerable the hardest.

These cuts have affected support for migrants, refugees, and the communities hosting them, as well as programs focused on women, girls, and children. Initiatives addressing gender-based violence and the creation of safe learning spaces for children were among those impacted. Despite the constraints, Panova emphasized that UN interventions remain vital to protecting Egypt’s most at-risk populations.

To respond to the evolving financial landscape, the UN is exploring innovative funding mechanisms with the government, including debt swaps. “We jointly reflect on this and we see what and how we can jointly work on innovative financing,” Panova said. “Debt swaps, for example, is one of the solutions… And it has always to be led by the government.”

Panova returned repeatedly to the need for scale and unified action. “We don’t have the money. We don’t have the luxury, because of the complexity of the problems,” she said. “We need to come together, and we need to work at scale under the leadership of the government.”

Among the UN’s major areas of cooperation with Egypt is social protection. UN-supported cash transfer programs in the country currently reach more than five million households. Panova explained that these programs are not limited to financial assistance but also link beneficiaries to employment, education, food security, and health services.

“You give cash, but in addition to the cash you empower people so they can get out of that poverty trap. And this is what the UN brings to that cash program,” she said.

Working with the government, the UN is helping develop a national social protection framework that integrates social insurance, social assistance, employment pathways, and data-driven crisis response. “We joined efforts so that the country comes up with a predictable social protection system, which is a system-wide approach, in a very unpredictable time we live in,” Panova noted.

Despite tight resources and increasing complexity, Panova’s message is clear: sustainable development in Egypt hinges on coordinated, large-scale action — and on the government’s leadership at every step.