Nearly 14 million people across Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan face severe hunger due to cuts in global humanitarian aid, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned Wednesday.
The WFP’s largest donor, the United States, has sharply reduced foreign aid under President Donald Trump, and other major nations have also made or announced cuts in development and humanitarian assistance. “WFP’s funding has never been more challenged. The agency expects to receive 40% less funding for 2025, resulting in a projected budget of $6.4 billion, down from $10 billion in 2024,” the Rome-based agency said in a report titled A Lifeline at Risk, as reported in Reuters.
The report warned that cuts to food assistance could push 13.7 million people from “crisis” to “emergency” levels of hunger—one step away from famine on the five-level international hunger scale.
WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain said the situation threatens decades of progress in the fight against hunger. “The gap between what WFP needs to do and what we can afford to do has never been larger. We are at risk of losing decades of progress in the fight against hunger,” McCain said.
She added that even regions with hard-won gains are vulnerable. “It’s not just the countries engulfed in major emergencies. Even hard-won gains in the Sahel region, where 500,000 people have been lifted out of aid dependence, could experience severe setbacks without help, and we want to prevent that,” McCain said.
The WFP report comes as millions of vulnerable people remain at risk of malnutrition and famine unless urgent international funding is restored.
