The humanitarian sector crisis of 2025 not only impacts millions of people and their communities in humanitarian emergencies and complex crises. Secondarily, it also affects thousands of humanitarian and development workers, with job losses and great uncertainty. How do you cope when the sector you have chosen as your vocation starts to shake?
To answer this question, I spoke with Chahrazed Anane, a consultant specializing in humanitarian careers and founder of Humanitarian Career Consulting. She has worked for more than fifteen years in humanitarian action and today accompanies other professionals in the sector in their professional transition, repositioning and leadership processes.
What is the impact of the 2025 humanitarian crisis on the humanitarian workforce?
The humanitarian sector has been through many crises and reforms, but the current one is one of the most sudden and profound. Overnight, a large number of people with years of experience found themselves unable to continue the actions they had committed to assisting communities in need. Interventions were simply stopped and projects were suddenly cancelled.
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In addition to facing this blow, their own contracts were ending, and with it a professional identity and a strong link to the identities of their organizations and of an entire sector. At that point, questions arise that are not easily answered: who am I outside of this work? or will I be able to continue offering assistance to communities affected by conflict and forced displacement?.
For all humanitarian action professionals who continue to work in the sector, there is also a general feeling of uncertainty about the direction the sector may take, possible changes in intervention models or the soundness of the humanitarian principles and the ethical foundations of humanitarianism in a sector forced to reconfigure itself.
Transferable skills and humanitarian career management
According to Chahrazed, it is very common for humanitarian professionals to underestimate their value in the job market. However, it is years of experience in complex crisis contexts, making difficult decisions under very high pressure, working in coordination between multidisciplinary and multicultural teams. These are extraordinary competencies that can, however, remain blurred in humanitarian jargon.
The key is to assess the skills and knowledge you already have, identify the new direction you want to take, and translate your existing competencies into the language of that new sector or employer. In many cases, moreover, these will not be radical transitions. They may lead to other roles within the same organisation, other similar or different organisations, academia, or social impact entrepreneurship. Professional careers have always evolved with a great deal of mobility. That hasn't changed. It has just changed shape.
How do new humanitarian workers cope with this situation?
Just like years ago, there are still thousands of people with a professional interest in humanitarian action and development cooperation. What's more, these people never found themselves in a static and immobile sector. The career paths of those who began their careers in the 1990s were very different from those who began their careers in the 2000s or 2010s.
The outlook for 2026 is also different. We see an industry with fewer permanent positions and more short-term contracts, greater demand for technical profiles and much more national and local leadership. There will continue to be a need for new people, with new ideas and new skills. Possibly, highly resilient and flexible profiles, with the ability to move between sectors and adapt quickly to new departments and positions, will be more valued. In this new system, humanitarian aid workers will not be able to rely on leaving the management of their careers in the hands of the organizations (possibly never a good idea). On the contrary, they will have to take a more active role in networking, professional visibility and skills mapping, as well as more conscious and strategic career decision making.
Blog
The blog posts in Salud Everywhere expand its content on humanitarian aid and cooperation, health in humanitarian crises and career advice with news, opinion and analysis.
External links
- Humanitarian Career Consulting.
- Chahrazed Anane's LinkedIn profile.
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