Protection Capacities Under Pressure: Evidence from Consultations with Protection Partners across 22 Operations

As protection actors enter 2026, they are facing reduced capacity to operate, at a time when protection risks remain high across many humanitarian crises. This report explores how the current funding contraction is impacting protection partners. This includes identifying risks, preventing and mitigating harm, and ensuring timely and effective responses for those most at risk.

The analysis starts from the scale of funding cuts affecting the protection sector and examines how they are reshaping protection capacities. Effective protection action depends on interconnected functions that allow partners to deliver response, maintain proximity to affected populations, and inform wider humanitarian decisions. When these functions are reduced simultaneously, the impact goes beyond fewer activities: it weakens the ability to identify who is at risk across age, gender and disability profiles, adapt to changing threats, sustain referrals and follow-up, and prevent needs from escalating.

This report therefore focuses on the following question: How have the past year’s funding cuts affected protection programming, staffing and the capacity to sustain effective protection action? The survey and consultations show that the impact of funding reductions is not limited to individual protection activities or isolated projects. It is affecting the broader protection capacity chain (workforce, service delivery, geographic coverage, engagement with affected populations), as well as system-enabling functions such as analysis, coordination, technical support, advocacy and capacity strengthening.

Chapter 1 explains why the current financing and policy environment makes this moment particularly significant for protection. Chapter 2 provides an overview of reported impacts across protection activities. Chapter 3 analyses what is being lost across the protection capacity chain, focusing on workforce, protection services, geographic reach, engagement with affected populations and system-enabling capacities.