In a press release issued on Friday 6 February, the European Commission announced the allocation of €123.3 million in humanitarian aid in 2026 to respond to structural and climatic crises in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Part of the budgeted amount will be dedicated to food aid, healthcare and protecting displaced populations, particularly in the context of the crisis in Venezuela (€52 million allocated) and the escalating armed violence in Haiti (€23 million) and Colombia (€17 million).
Some of the remaining funds will be invested in preparedness to strengthen the resilience of infrastructure and communities to climate-related disasters. Central and South America remains “the [region] second most exposed to extreme weather events in the world”, as the press release points out.
This funding is also intended to compensate for the UN’s recent “severe budget cuts”, while “almost all the Humanitarian Response Plans in the region in 2025 were funded at less than 20%”, deplores the Commission. Last year, 15.6 million people in the region were identified by the UN as requiring emergency assistance.
See the Commission’s press release: https://aeur.eu/f/kmu (Original version in French by Justine Manaud)