2025 Emergency Watchlist- A World Out of Balance

The 2025 Emergency Watchlist, titled “A World Out of Balance,” describes how four deep-seated global imbalances reinforce one another to spark new crises, enable existing ones to spread, and undermine efforts to bring them under control. It highlights how more conflict but less diplomacy, more attacks on civilians but fewer consequences, more carbon emissions but less climate support, and more wealth accumulation but less poverty alleviation are driving instability, deepening fragility, and concentrating humanitarian needs in the world’s most vulnerable contexts. The report warns that without urgent and coordinated action to address these systemic imbalances, millions more people will be pushed into crisis.