HAMILTON, Canada

The World Food Program (WFP) warned on Wednesday that global food assistance is at a "breaking point," with record hunger levels and severe funding cuts forcing the UN agency to scale back operations in multiple crisis-hit countries.

"We really are in some countries at a breaking point right now, at a time of record hunger levels," said Ross Smith, director of emergency preparedness and response, at a virtual briefing about the WFP's report, "A Lifeline at Risk: Food Assistance at a Breaking Point."

He said declining funding and limited resources are "putting people at a breaking point, especially those that are the most vulnerable, that rely on our humanitarian assistance, especially in fragile and vulnerable contexts."

Smith reported that an estimated 319 million people are acutely food insecure, with 44 million at emergency levels of hunger.

"We are in an unprecedented time in WFP's history of two concurrent famines," Smith said, noting the number of people facing famine-like conditions has doubled in the last two years to 1.4 million in Gaza, Sudan, South Sudan, Mali and Yemen.

Smith warned that the agency expects a 40% reduction in assistance levels this year due to the funding crisis, which is expected to worsen in 2026.

"We have fewer resources than ever before, and this mitigates our ability to meet the rising hunger across the world," he said.

In Afghanistan, where over 10 million people face acute food insecurity, Smith said the WFP can currently reach “less than 10% of those people,” and expects funding breaks “as early as November this year.”

He cited "record levels of hunger" in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where more than 27 million people are food insecure, but only 2.3 million are receiving aid. In Somalia, WFP support has been "downsized considerably," reaching "just 350,000 people" next month, less than a quarter of last year's target.

Jean Martin Bauer, WFP's director of food security and nutrition analysis, said the report highlights a "disconnect between very high needs for food response and lower availability of funding," and warned that "13.7 million people will fall into emergency levels of hunger as a result of funding cuts."