Tom Hiddleston: The world is making a grave mistake with cuts – and children are paying the price

TYears ago, I watched the reunion of a family torn apart by war. I ask myself if this will still be possible in 2026.

I met Nyalim* on my second trip to South Sudan in November 2016. He was twelve years old. He was on a routine hospital visit with his mother and aunt when gunshots rang out. In the chaos, he ran in one direction and his mother and aunt in another.

While his family returned to Bentiu, Nyalim found himself on a boat to Bor. His family believed him dead. Three years later, Unicef’s tracking program enabled him to reconnect with his parents. We flew him home to reunite with them; The moment he saw his mother and father again is a moment I will remember for as long as I live.

On the same visit, I met Regina at an emergency feeding center; a young mother fleeing the fighting by carrying her severely malnourished fifteen-month-old daughter, Emmanuela, across miles of conflict. Emmanuela was receiving treatment when I met them. After everything they had endured, there was finally reason to believe that he would survive.

Nyalim was reunited with her parents, thanks to the persistence of local social workers and a family who refused to be separated. Emmanuela survived thanks to her mother’s determination. International aid cannot do justice to this courage, but it can ensure that when people like Regina arrive, there is someone to welcome them.

Behind every nutrition center, every monitoring program, every health worker who is there when needed, lie years of investment in nutrition, in health systems, in the infrastructure of an ordinary childhood. Governments, including the United Kingdom, have helped establish these systems. The question now is whether they will let it fall apart.

South Sudan is a country facing increasing crises today. Since the beginning of 2026, renewed conflict has displaced 330,000 people and the country is experiencing the largest cholera epidemic ever recorded; Of the nearly 100,000 cases, children are among those most affected. More than two million children under the age of five face acute malnutrition.

The withdrawal of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) further deepened an already hopeless situation; 186 feeding facilities were closed. As Unicef ​​Country Representative Noala Skinner recently warned me, a malnourished child is twelve times more likely to die if left untreated.

In 2025, for the first time this century, deaths of children under five are expected to increase as a result of political decisions taken around the world. Aid budgets are being cut at a time when conflicts, climate disasters and disease outbreaks are accelerating.

The UK’s direction of travel requires some scrutiny. Bilateral aid spending to African countries, where most child deaths occur, decreased by 56 percent. The human cost of these decisions is becoming visible, as the overall aid budget is planned to fall to 0.3 percent of Gross National Income by 2027. For context, in 2016 the percentage of UK Gross National Income allocated to international aid was 0.7 per cent. Ten years ago we gave more than twice as much as we do now.

Countries like Malawi, where more than 57,000 children live with HIV, and Sierra Leone, which has one of the highest maternal and neonatal mortality rates in the world, are losing support altogether. The government says it is prioritizing conflict-affected states such as South Sudan, but this comes at a price paid by children elsewhere.

This is what funding cuts mean in practice: ministers are forcing themselves into impossible choices about which children deserve life-saving treatment. Vulnerable children are being pitted against each other in a calculus that no government should have to do and no child should be subjected to.

I’m playing in Soccer Aid for Unicef ​​on 31 May; This is the twentieth anniversary of a match that has raised £121 million for children since 2006. At a moment when governments are backtracking on commitments to the world’s poorest children, this record is a powerful reminder of where the British public really stands: choosing to invest in the futures of children everywhere for two decades. But public generosity, no matter how extraordinary, is no substitute for political will.

No child chooses where to be born. The children I met in South Sudan had passions as vibrant as any child growing up in the UK. The birth lottery should not determine whether they will survive, whether they will learn to read, whether they will be given a real chance at a full and happy childhood. Unicef ​​UK is asking the UK government to ensure that at least a quarter of the aid budget is spent on child-focused health, nutrition and education programmes, so these opportunities can be turned into reality.

When I met Nyalim, she was about to see her parents again after many years. When I met Emmanuela, her life-saving treatment was working. These consequences were not inevitable. This happened because the international community decided ten years ago that it was worth investing in these children.

This commitment is now wavering and children will pay the biggest price. The UK government can choose to build on the success of its aid legacy, or it can look at the world’s most vulnerable children and decide they can no longer afford to help them.

*Names have been changed to protect identities

Tom Hiddleston is an ambassador for Unicef ​​England and will play for England. Football Aid to Unicef on May 31

This article was produced as part of The Independent. Rethinking Global Aid project