Funding cuts will push more people toward starvation, says UNWFP's Skau

The United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP), which is the largest humanitarian agency, is going through one of the worst funding crises in its history following the US government slashing the annual assistance by almost half since 2024.

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The funding shortfall has forced the agency to drastically cut staff and programmes. In a conversation with Sanjeeb Mukherjee in New Delhi, Carl Skau, deputy executive director and chief operating officer of WFP, said that due to the fund crunch, possibilities of famines and starvation deaths have grown manifold in the conflict-ridden regions such as Yemen, Sudan, Palestine, Syria, Afghanistan and Congo. Edited excerpts:

How is funding cut impacting the WFP's humanitarian activities and how severe are they?

The WFP is the largest humanitarian and food security agency in the world, employing some 20,000 people and has had a budget of around $10 billion over the past few years.

This year, we had a drop of about 40 per cent or 35 per cent, it's mainly due to cuts from the US. But not only that, even Europe is cutting down on funding, along with the UK, Germany and others.

So, we are funded around 75 per cent from what we call traditional donors, which is largely the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, and we are completely voluntarily funded as well.

But, the challenge is that the needs keep going up. So, this year, we estimate some 320 million people are acutely food insecure. That's three times the number we had five years ago.

So, how are you addressing the fund crunch?