Imperative for WFP to tide over funding crisis

Drastic cut in food assistance by the USA and other major donors to the World Food Programme (WFP) is bad news for victims of conflict, natural disaster and climate change worldwide. The WFP, has reportedly  said that it is facing 40 per cent drop in donations in 2025 compared  to last year. As a result, 58 million people are exposed to extreme hunger, i.e., starvation in 28 crisis zones across the globe. Those critical zones, as the WFP report adds, include, Gaza, Sudan, Syria, DR Congo, Mali, Haiti, Sahel, Lake Chad Basin, etc. 

In fact, the gravity of the humanitarian crisis related to food insecurity is widespread.  Some 343 million people are learnt to be currently grappling with extreme  food insecurity across the globe. Notably, food insecurity in most of the trouble spots is of political origin. The internally displaced people in Sudan, South Sudan, DR Congo, Gaza, over a million  Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh  are all victims of political strife and wars.  Most of these people had earlier been living a normal life but are now forced to live the uncertain lives of refugees and left completely  at the mercy of world powers who appear to be quite unresponsive to their  sufferings even if those mean starvation and death for lack of food supply. The major food assistance providers who have often used food aid as a political weapon against many of the countries in Asia, Africa and many other poorer nations of the global South, have now conveniently chosen to substantially reduce or in cases outright stop food assistance to the people in those crisis zones.

In fact, it is again political exigencies of the time, for instance, the newly elected US president, Donald Trump,  has set priorities different from his predecessors through his announcement of 90-day pause on foreign aid. In consequence, dozens of aid grants were halted, excepting an emergency waiver his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio later made public, concerning life-saving aid with a view to keeping food assistance flowing. But the flow of aid fund has been remaining stalled and   it is still not clear if and when the fund flow would resume. The impact of the US's suspension  of global food assistance, according to WFP's estimate, is that the movement of 507,000 metric tons of food  valued at US$340 million, is stranded whether on the sea, waiting in warehouses of 23 countries or in that country's domestic supply chain. The situation has been further compounded by the drastic restructuring of the USAID, the main US agency looking after global food relief.   

 Western Europe's latest policy shift towards enhanced defence spending, for whatever reasons, is largely behind their present negative stance on overseas food assistance. Unsurprisingly, the WFP,  which aimed to cover 123 million of the global food insecure people, half of whom now risk imminent loss of food support,  is now  handicapped by severe fund shortage as it received only US$1.57 billion until March 2024 in a stark contrast to US$21.1 billion originally sought for the year (2024)! The moment of truth has come for the UN agencies as well as food insecure countries which thought the rich West's support was guaranteed. The WFP, for instance, should consider widening its support base rather than depending on a handful of rich nations of the North.