As 2025 draws to a close, Trumanitarian host Lars Peter Nissen invites Meg Sattler, Adelina Kamal, and Thomas Byrnes to the Trumanitarian studio to reckon with a year that seems to have defied comprehension.
The numbers tell one story: humanitarian funding has collapsed to 2016 levels, projected below $22.7 billion. This isn't a funding cycle dip but the structural unwinding of the post-Cold War peace dividend. As Western governments pivot from solidarity back to defence spending, a system built over decades is contracting in months—while the UN's humanitarian reset unfolds behind closed doors without clarity on what we're actually resetting toward.
Yet within this contraction, something else stirs. Are local and resistance humanitarians – mutual aid - becoming the centre of gravity the system always claimed they should be? As the roof blows off the humanitarian house, do we patch a corner or rebuild entirely?