UN slashes World Food Progamme due to lack of funds

Ukrainians gather as food relief from United Nations comes in on Saturday. Pic/Getty Images

Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the World Food Programme, told a news conference that at least 38 of the 86 countries where WFP operates have already seen cuts or plan to cut assistance soon, including Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and West Africa. He said WFP's operating requirement is $20 billion to deliver aid to everyone in need, but it was aiming for between $10 billion and $14 billion, which was what the agency had received in the past few years.

"We're still aiming at that, but we have only so far this year gotten to about half of that, around $5 billion," Skau said. He said humanitarian needs were "going through the roof" in 2021 and 2022 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine and its global implications.

"Those needs continue to grow, those drivers are still there," he said, "but the funding is drying up. So we're looking at 2024 (being) even more dire." The largest food and nutrition crisis in history today persists, Skau said. "This year, 345 million people continue to be acutely food insecure while hundreds of millions of people are at risk of worsening hunger."

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