World Food Programme cuts Gaza aid over funding shortfall

Highlights

World Food Programme is reducing critical aid to 500,000 people in Gaza due to a $450 million funding gap for operations through March 2027.
Agency has cut food rations by half, reducing daily hot meals to 150,000 from 250,000 and limiting parcels and flour quantities.
Integrated Food Security Phase Classification reports 1.4 million Gazans facing crisis or worse hunger in July, with risks heightened by stalled peace talks and worsening funding shortfalls.

Funding gap forces reductions in Gaza operations

As reported by Financial Times, citing the World Food Programme, funding shortages are forcing the UN agency to reduce what it describes as critical assistance to 500,000 people in Gaza, just under a quarter of the territory's 2.1 million population.

The agency says it needs $450 million to maintain critical operations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank over the six months to March 2027. It adds that it has received less than half as much funding for its Palestinian operation in 2026 as in previous years, after sweeping cuts to U.S. and western aid budgets over the past two years.

The reductions affect nearly a third of the 1.6 million people who have depended on WFP supplies since the ceasefire. The agency says it has cut food rations by half, with families receiving one parcel instead of two and a smaller bag of wheat flour, while hot meals are being reduced to 150,000 a day from 250,000.

Families in hard-to-reach areas, including those near the so-called yellow line that separates the parts of Gaza still occupied by Israeli troops from the more populated, Hamas-controlled area, are to receive a hot meal every other day rather than daily. WFP says funding can no longer sustain previous levels of support, which have included food parcels, bread, nutrition support, school snacks and cash assistance.

Fragile food security outlook raises humanitarian risks

Most Gazans are still living in tents or in the ruins of former homes, and the vast majority have lost their livelihoods as a result of the war. While access to humanitarian supplies has improved since the ceasefire, broader negotiations on a peace deal, under which Hamas is to disarm, Israeli troops are to withdraw and reconstruction is to begin, have stalled.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, an international hunger monitor, declared a famine in part of Gaza in August 2025 after severe Israeli restrictions on humanitarian deliveries, including a total blockade for 11 weeks between March and May. In July, the IPC says about 1.4 million people are still facing crisis levels or worse of acute food insecurity.

WFP says recent modest improvements in food security remain fragile and could quickly reverse if humanitarian funding continues to decline. The warning points to mounting pressure on relief agencies as winter nears and long-term recovery remains on hold.

In our earlier article on the UN-backed plan to move fertilizer through the Strait of Hormuz, we explained that the mechanism was still waiting on a U.S.-Iran agreement, with delays risking missed planting windows in import-dependent regions. We noted that prolonged disruption to fertilizer shipments could squeeze agricultural output, push up commodity prices, and heighten food insecurity risks across parts of Asia and Africa.

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