An explosion of global crises is breaking the world's biggest aid agency

Belts have tightened across the world in recent months. Conflict, climate change and inflation-imbued economic downturns have many governments and households alike thinking twice about spending. But some belts cannot get any tighter, including those of international aid agencies like the World Food Programme, which feeds more than 160 million people around the world. Last year, the UN agency – the largest humanitarian organisation in the world – raised a record $14 billion. But crises and inflation have become so bad that even an unprecedented funding drive no longer comes close to meeting the needs of its growing recipient pool. To achieve its rather modest goal of feeding nearly 150 million out of the 345 million people confronting acute hunger this year, the WFP needs to raise $23bn. It is projected to muster less than half of that. Cash-strapped and with more mouths to feed, the WFP has had to resort to either feeding fewer of them or feeding them less. Three humanitarian crises, in particular – Syria, Afghanistan and the Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh – illustrate the dire toll that a combination of donor distraction and donor fatigue can take on the world’s most vulnerable. In February, for the first time since the start of the Rohingya crisis, the WFP was forced to reduce its assistance for the nearly one million refugees living in Cox’s Bazar, the world’s largest refugee camp. The cuts, spurred by a $125 million funding shortfall, came in the form of a reduction in the value of food vouchers, down from $12 to $10 per person per month. By the end of June, the figure is expected to be $8, and by September the agency says assistance may stop altogether. In March, the WFP announced even deeper cuts to its food assistance programme in Afghanistan, where aid delivery is already complicated by a poor relationship between the international community and the Taliban. WFP officials in Afghanistan first tried cutting ration sizes in half. Then they began cutting the number of distributions. Between March and May, distributions dropped from 13 million people to five million. This month, they were suspended entirely in several provinces, with the agency saying it needs around $800 million over the next six months to continue its operations. Despite the scale of Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis (nine out of 10 families are food-insecure), the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ 2023 Afghanistan Humanitarian Response Plan, which calls for $4.6bn in aid, is less than 10 per cent funded. Last year, the WFP had to cut the size of rations for Syrians from 1,350 calories to 1,177 calories – just over half of an adult’s recommended daily intake. This week, it said it will soon distribute food aid to 2.5 million people instead of the 5.6 it served previously. The number of Syrians facing acute hunger is growing, having increased by more than half in the past four years. In the same period, the WFP’s cost of feeding people in the country has gone up by nearly a third. Even in government-held areas, record inflation made worse by the war in Ukraine has resulted in fewer people receiving subsidised food and fuel. And the consequences have gone well beyond nutrition. Families have had to make difficult choices between paying for food, medicine, school or fuel. More children are being withdrawn from classes, and early marriage is on the rise, according to the UN. Tough choices must be made when times are tough economically, and each decision inevitably has consequences. But for those reliant on food assistance – whether in Asia or in any of the 120 countries and territories the WFP serves – decisions made in wealthier capitals can be the difference between life and death.