The United Nations’ emergency and disaster response agency will reduce its global workforce by 20% and scale back operations in nine countries, as it confronts a severe funding crisis and escalating global needs, it announced on Friday.

In sobering letter to staff shared on the agency’s website, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) head Tom Fletcher outlined “brutal cuts” driven by a nearly $60 million funding shortfall for 2025, compounded by rising humanitarian demands.

OCHA will withdraw or adjust operations in Cameroon, Colombia, Eritrea, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkey, and Zimbabwe, and aim to prioritize “dynamic and full responses” in remaining locations where it operates.

OCHA plans to lay off approximately 500 staff members from its workforce of about 2,600 employees across over 60 countries with a more concentrated presence in fewer locations, according to Najwa Mekki, Director of Communications at OCHA citing a separate letter Fletcher wrote.

The cuts follow months of austerity measures, including a hiring freeze and travel restrictions, which saved $3.7 million.

“The humanitarian community was already underfunded, overstretched and literally, under attack. Now, we face a wave of brutal cuts,” Fletcher wrote, emphasizing that the reductions stem from financial constraints rather than diminished needs.

Fletcher stressed the agency’s pivot toward a “lighter, faster” model focused on core priorities: crisis response, sector reform, and humanitarian leadership. The moves align with the UN’s broader “Humanitarian Reset” – a ten-point plan agreed upon in February by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) – and Secretary-General António Guterres’ UN80 reform initiative.

Fletcher defended the decisions, insisting OCHA must “coordinate, not replicate” efforts to preserve lifesaving work. “We believe passionately in what we do,” Fletcher wrote, “but we cannot continue to do it all.”

Does America want its friends back?

After three months of insulting, tariffing and even threatening to annex some of its best allies, the Trump administration suddenly needs some help.

The US President has now escalated a full-on trade clash with China that he doesn’t seem to know how to win. So the administration is rushing to work out how to build leverage against Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is in no mood to cede to Trump’s bullying.

But there’s one thing that might work. It would bring to bear America’s strength and global power and could perhaps build pressure on Beijing to act on consistent US complaints about market access, theft of intellectual property, industrial espionage and other issues. There’s only one problem: This approach would conflict with Trump’s “America first” mantra.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pointed out on Fox Business this week that US allies such as Japan, South Korea and India would soon be in trade talks with Washington, as would Vietnam.

“Everyone is coming to the table, and basically China is surrounded,” he said. Bessent added that a topic of talks should be a joint goal: “How do we get China to rebalance? That is the big win here.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked on Friday why American allies would help it counter China when Trump was treating friends and foes alike. She replied: “You’ll have to talk to our allies who are reaching out to us. The phones are ringing off of the hooks. They have made it very clear they need the United States of America, they need our markets, they need our consumer base.”

But everything that Trump has done since he arrived back in the Oval Office has been designed to destroy groups of like-minded democracies. Several times this week, he dissed the European Union. “I always say it was formed to really do damage to the United States in trade,” he said.

He’s not the only Europe hater. Vice President JD Vance revealed his distaste for the continent at the Munich Security forum and also in a group chat of officials about air strikes in Yemen.

Trump’s spite in the Western hemisphere is also an issue.

A unified North American trading powerhouse has long been seen as a potential bulwark against China. But Trump has repeatedly threatened to take over Canada and has targeted Mexico with some of his toughest tariffs. New Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has warned that his country’s traditional relationship with Washington is over.

Still, the idea of building an allied front to try to modify China’s trade practices is such a good idea, it’s a wonder no one thought of it before.

They did. And Trump shut it down.

On the first day of his first term in 2017, Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a group of 12 nations including allies like Mexico, Canada, Japan, and Australia, as well as Japan that did not include China. The president also shut down a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership that would have linked the world’s two largest markets.

The question now is whether Trump has so alienated America’s friends that they won’t take his calls.

An explosion occurred outside the offices of Hellenic Train in Athens, Greek police said on Friday, adding there were no immediate reports of injuries.

Police cordoned off the area after two Greek media organizations received warning calls that an explosive device would go off within 35 minutes, police officials said. A suspicious-looking bag was spotted outside the building which was evacuated.

An investigation is under way. A police official said the cause was likely a makeshift bomb.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Hellenic Train is a unit of Italy’s Ferrovie dello Stato IPO-FERRO.MI, which operates passenger and freight routes in Greece.

A deadly 2023 train crash, Greece’s worst rail disaster, killed 57 people, mostly students, and injured dozens.

Many Greeks view the crash as emblematic of the neglect of the country’s railways in recent decades and also of a persistent failure by the state to address safety concerns. The crash has prompted angry protests, fueled further by a lack of trust in institutions.

Survival guides, stockpiling and mass evacuation drills. Europe is scrambling to prepare its citizens for the growing threat of conflict arriving on its doorstep.

Several European nations have been offering sobering guidance in recent months – envisioning garages and subway stations transformed into bunkers and promoting psychological resilience.

One overarching message is the need for a change in the population’s mentality to become war ready. As NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte told security experts in Brussels in December: “It is time to shift to a wartime mindset.”

It comes as European leaders fear that Russian President Vladimir Putin, emboldened by gains in Ukraine, could try to push further into the continent, while Europe’s longtime and powerful ally, the United States, adopts a more hostile stance to maintaining European security, raising doubts over how far it would be willing to intervene should a NATO country be invaded.

But questions remain over how effective these contingency plans would really be, and – moreover – whether civilians will take the guidance seriously.

‘Go indoors, close all windows and doors’

The European Commission has urged all citizens to stockpile enough food and other essential supplies to sustain them for at least 72 hours in the event of a crisis. In guidance released in March, the commission stressed the need for Europe to foster a culture of “preparedness” and “resilience.”

It came as individual countries have also been putting their own guidance in place for emergencies, including conflict.

Last June, Germany updated its Framework Directive for Overall Defense, giving directions on what to do should conflict break out in Europe. The document envisions the complete transformation of daily life for German citizens in the event of war.

Sweden has issued a survival guide titled, “If Crisis or War Comes.” The pamphlet was distributed to millions of households in November, after being updated for the first time in six years due to increasing military threat levels.

That leaflet instructs Swedes on how warnings would be issued in the event of war, including an outdoor alert system which it says is operational in most areas. “Go indoors, close all windows and doors and, if possible, switch off the ventilation. Listen to Swedish public broadcaster Sveriges Radio, channel P4 for more information,” the pamphlet instructs.

It offers advice on where to seek shelter during an air raid, including cellars, garages and underground metro stations. If caught outside with no immediate cover, it advises to lie on the ground, “preferably in a small pit or ditch.”

Specific advice is given to Swedish citizens regarding attacks using nuclear weapons, telling them to “take cover as you would during an air raid. Civil defense shelters provide the best protection.” It adds: “Radiation levels will lower drastically after a couple of days.”

It also includes tips on evacuation, how to stop bleeding, dealing with anxiety, and how to speak to children about crisis and war.

For Finland – which shares a 1,340-kilometer (830-mile) border with Russia, the longest of all NATO member states – the defense of its sovereignty against Moscow has long been part of the country’s psyche.

The country has been preparing for the possibility of a conflict with Russia for decades. Since the 1950s, the construction of bomb shelters under apartment blocks and office buildings has been mandatory.

But certainly, the Nordic state, which joined NATO in 2023 after decades of nonalignment, has been accelerating its state of readiness since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Two years ago, prompted by Russia’s war, the Finnish government took stock of its available emergency shelters, finding it had a total of 50,500 – which could shelter a possible 4.8 million people in a country of 5.6 million.

Helsinki’s interior ministry also issued new crisis guidance in November, giving readers advice on how to prepare for long power cuts, water outages, telecommunications disruptions, extreme weather events and military conflict.

Will people listen?

While nations have updated their civilian protection guidance, there remains no guarantee on how much attention individuals will pay to it.

However, she added: “The fine line to walk obviously is to increase preparedness without going into alarmism and catastrophizing. We want people to be aware, we don’t want them to be freaked out.”

For some countries, particularly those caught in Moscow’s sphere of influence, the threat from Russia feels more tangible. For others, it’s harder to grasp.

Major points to Finland – which lost territory to Russia during the Winter War in 1939-40 – and the Baltic nations, which were annexed by the Soviet Union between 1940 and 1991, as countries where the threat from Russia is more embedded in what she called the countries’ “DNA.”

“The existential threat, the fear of being overrun, of disappearing from the map, is very real in the Baltic states. They wonder why other countries don’t get it,” she said.

“The Finns, for the entire Cold War period, took defense seriously,” Major added. “Why are we all going to Finland now and looking at their bunker system and their stocks of medication and their reservist system? They learned from history; nobody is going to help us. We have to do it on our own.”

Major named Portugal, Italy and the United Kingdom as countries where the threat from Russia is less present in the national consciousness. Italy, she says, is more concerned with the threat from terrorism and instability from fragile states close to the country’s southern border. “It’s far closer to them,” she said. “It’s more of a problem for their stability, prosperity, domestic politics.”

The mainland UK, an island nation, was last invaded by a foreign power in 1066, while for many countries in Western Europe, they were invaded during the Second World War. This means living generations have less experience from which to draw on and its civilians may be less likely to take heed of any government advice.

“The question is how do you change the DNA of a country, that’s the crucial question,” Major said.

‘Protect and survive’

The effectiveness of such civilian protection plans also remains unclear. In the past, they have even been met with ridicule.

For decades during the Cold War era, the British government provided official information for its citizens to protect themselves against the nuclear Soviet threat.

The most prominent British public information source was known as the “Protect and Survive’” campaign, produced between 1974 and 1980. The series offered information on the dangers of nuclear fallout, instructions to follow in the hours and days after a nuclear attack, and a plan for survival.

A pamphlet published in May 1980 included tips on how to build a makeshift fallout room in your home, including a so-called inner refuge to protect from radioactive dust.

The campaign became the subject of criticism for offering unrealistic advice and presenting a false sense of optimism in the face of nuclear annihilation. It was long satirized in British popular culture.

However, after Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, Britain’s The Times newspaper demanded the government publish the booklets. “As a result, it was published at a time when there wasn’t an imminent threat of attack, so people looked at it through a different lens,” Young said. For that reason, he believes, there was more of a “cultural backlash” against it, adding that it was even ridiculed in popular British sitcoms.

Young pointed to the UK government’s advice to whitewash windows to help stop the spread of heat from a nuclear blast as one of the more comical suggestions. Civilians were instructed to “coat windows inside with diluted emulsion paint of a light color so that they will reflect away much of the heat flash, even if the blast which will follow is to shatter them.”

In comparison, Young sees Europe’s modern-day advice – including the UK’s guidance on preparing for emergencies – as more realistic, and incorporating more of the important psychological aspects, such as how to deal with trauma.

For Major, the need to prepare civilians for external threats – particularly in the “grey zone” area – can’t be stressed enough.

“We tend to look at the military (aspect), but we are terribly vulnerable in the grey zone. So what we have to think about is deterrence, defense and resilience. And this particularly implies a greater preparedness of society.”

She adds, “If the society is not willing and not ready to support a war like the Ukrainian society is doing at the moment, we will not prevail.”