Cut the funding, and the tools go dark.
In the restive northeast of Nigeria, roughly two million people have been living without permanent homes for nearly two decades — pushed out by conflict, battered further by climate shocks and disease, and increasingly left in the dark by shrinking aid budgets. For a long time, even the most basic question — where are these people, and what do they need? — went largely unanswered. Then a digital tool changed that.
The Displacement Tracking Matrix, built by the International Organization for Migration, gave Nigerian authorities something they had long lacked: reliable, granular data on who was displaced, where they had gone, and what they required to survive. The tool has since spread far beyond Nigeria's borders. Today it operates in 91 countries, quietly underpinning the decisions of humanitarian workers and government officials who would otherwise be navigating crises half-blind.
That story — of technology stepping in where human systems have failed — is at the heart of discussions unfolding this week at UN Headquarters in New York, where the Commission on Population and Development is meeting from April 13 through 17. The session is framed around three reports prepared by Secretary-General António Guterres, and together they paint a picture that is equal parts promising and alarming.
The first report traces how digital tools are reshaping the most intimate contours of human life: where people choose to live, when they start families, how long they live. Medical technologies are extending lifespans. Telemedicine is reaching patients who never had a clinic nearby. India's eSanjeevani platform alone has logged more than 150 million remote consultations. Bangladesh's mHealth project connects new mothers to health guidance via SMS. In Nepal, an AI system called SITA — developed with support from UNFPA — can rapidly parse national datasets and generate detailed policy briefs that would have taken human analysts weeks.
But the second report introduces a harder truth: these gains are not evenly distributed, and the gap is growing. Across low-income countries, rural regions, and marginalized communities, millions of people still have no reliable internet access, no digital health services, and no pathway into the modern economy that technology is reshaping around them. Women, older adults, and people with disabilities are consistently the most excluded. As wealthier nations build out AI infrastructure and digital health systems, the distance between them and the countries left behind is not holding steady — it is widening.
Ageing populations add another layer of urgency. The second report focuses specifically on the growing global demand for elder care, geriatric specialists, and assistive technologies. Countries that want to meet that demand will need to invest not just in hardware and connectivity, but in the human capacity to use them — science training, digital literacy, and the kind of infrastructure that makes telemedicine possible in a rural village, not just a city hospital.
Then comes the third report, and it is the one that casts the longest shadow. Since 2023, international development funding has fallen sharply. The cuts have hit population-related programs especially hard in low- and middle-income countries — precisely the places where the need is greatest and the alternatives are fewest. Aid for technology, research, and data collection has not been spared. The Secretary-General's language is direct: current funding levels are not adequate to meet the Commission's goals, and they fall well short of what the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda requires.
Guterres is calling for financing that is not just larger but more predictable — sustained commitments to sexual and reproductive health, population data systems, and technology access in the world's most vulnerable nations. The Displacement Tracking Matrix works because someone paid to build it and keeps paying to run it. The same is true of every SMS health line, every telemedicine platform, every AI tool that turns raw census data into actionable policy. Cut the funding, and the tools go dark.
What happens in New York this week will not immediately change conditions in northeast Nigeria or in the rural communities of Bangladesh where a text message may be the only medical advice a new mother receives. But the Commission's deliberations will shape the financing frameworks and political commitments that determine whether those tools survive the current funding drought — or quietly disappear.
Notable Quotes
Current funding levels are not sufficient to meet the Commission's goals or achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda — stronger and more predictable financing is urgently needed.— UN Secretary-General António Guterres, as reflected in his reports to the Commission on Population and Development
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does it matter so much that Nigeria can now count its displaced people accurately?
Because you can't help people you can't find. For years, aid was distributed on guesswork — and guesswork in a crisis means some people get too much and others get nothing.
And the Displacement Tracking Matrix fixed that?
It gave decision-makers a real picture: how many people, where they are, what they specifically need. That's the difference between a relief operation and a relief lottery.
The reports talk a lot about a digital divide. Is that just about internet access?
It's deeper than that. It's about who gets to benefit from the tools being built right now — telemedicine, AI analysis, digital health records. If you're rural, elderly, disabled, or a woman in a low-income country, the answer is often: not you.
India's telemedicine platform has done 150 million sessions. Doesn't that suggest the divide is closing?
In some places, yes. But those successes tend to cluster in countries that already had infrastructure to build on. The countries with the least are still the furthest behind, and the gap isn't narrowing on its own.
What's the funding situation actually doing to these programs on the ground?
It's threatening the continuity of exactly the systems that work. A tracking matrix, a telemedicine line, an AI policy tool — they all require ongoing investment. Pull the money and the institutional knowledge dissolves too.
The Secretary-General is calling for more predictable financing. What does predictable mean in practice?
It means governments and donors committing to multi-year funding rather than annual decisions that can be reversed whenever political winds shift. Humanitarian infrastructure can't be built on one-year grants.
Is there a version of this story where the technology gap closes without a major funding reversal?
Not really. The tools exist. The knowledge exists. What's missing is the sustained political will to pay for them in the places that need them most.