BALTIMORE, Maryland, Apr 16 (IPS) - Last year, 343 million people were experiencing acute food insecurity, according to the World Food Programme (WFP). That's 10 percent higher than in 2023.
A mother gives her 10-month-old daughter porridge in Burkina Faso in the Sahel region, where WFP is providing assistance to prevent malnutrition. Credit: WFP/Cheick Omar Bandaogo And in the midst of a food insecurity crisis around the world, funding is being slashed for programs on the front lines of delivering food aid, fighting for humanitarianism, and literally saving lives. We're seeing this play out not only in the United States, as we've discussed in this newsletter and reported on at Food Tank, but worldwide. WFP is facing a 40 percent drop in funding for 2025 compared to 2024. This has created what WFP calls an "unprecedented crisis for tens of millions across the globe reliant on food aid." "For the past two years, despite the generosity of many governments and individual donors, WFP has experienced a steady decline in funding. These cuts are pushing tens of millions of people who depend on WFP toward catastrophic hunger," said Barron Segar, World Food Program USA President and CEO. "Never have the stakes been higher. We urgently need an infusion of support from individuals and the private sector here in the U.S. to help continue WFP's lifesaving work." On social media, WFP did not mince words: Putting food aid in jeopardy "could amount to a death sentence for millions of people facing extreme hunger and starvation." WFP's current funding situation puts more than 58 million people at risk of losing life-saving assistance in the agency's 28 most critical crisis response operations. This hits children especially hard: Sweeping cuts to global nutrition funding could result in a staggering 369,000 additional child deaths every year, per a new analysis published in Nature. I want to highlight some of the work that WFP conducts globally, including emergency assistance in conflict areas, social safety programs, and climate adaptation and resilience-building in 120+ countries. These life-saving measures could disappear if the organization does not…