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Info Service on UN Sustainable Development (May25/09) Penang, 22 May (Kanaga Raja) — The abrupt termination of funding in 2025 has disrupted operations, including in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, South Sudan, the Sudan and Yemen amid substantial reductions by major donors, according to the Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC). Funding to humanitarian food sectors is projected to drop by up to 45 percent, risking a deepening of acute food insecurity, it warned. Nutrition services to at least 14 million children are at risk, leaving them vulnerable to severe malnutrition and death, it said. Reductions in official development assistance will impact government fiscal capacities to support vulnerable populations, particularly in low-income countries, it added. Data collection on the food security and nutrition status of vulnerable populations will also be affected, said the GRFC. In other key findings, the report said in 2024, 295.3 million people across 53 countries and territories faced high levels of acute food insecurity, an increase of 13.7 million from 2023, and marking the sixth consecutive annual increase. More alarmingly, the report said the number of people facing catastrophic hunger (IPC/CH Phase 5) more than doubled over the same period to reach 1.9 million – the highest on record since the GRFC began tracking in 2016. The report found that conflict, economic shocks, climate extremes, and forced displacement continued to drive food insecurity and malnutrition around the world, with catastrophic impacts on many already fragile regions (see SUNS #10224 dated 20 May 2025). According to the report, published by the Global Network Against Food Crises (GNAFC) with analysis from the Food Security Information Network (FSIN), between 2016 and 2024, the share of the analysed population facing high levels of acute food insecurity in countries/territories with food crises nearly doubled from 11.4 percent to 22.6 percent while the number of people more than tripled. While official funding to food sectors – including humanitarian and development assistance – was increasing up to 2022, it had not kept pace with growing needs and failed to reverse deepening hunger, it said. Food sectors in countries/territories with food crises received only 3 percent of global development allocations – compared with 33 percent of global humanitarian allocations, the GRFC pointed out. The report said that this suggests that financial allocations primarily target the symptoms of food crises, rather than mitigating their drivers or the structural factors that increase vulnerability and limit capacities to recover, whether at the household, community or country level. “This is particularly true in protracted food crises where development allocations to food sectors are marginal.” Between 2016 and 2024, an average of 85 percent of humanitarian funding to food sectors in countries with food crises was directed to food assistance (cash and in-kind). The report said the remainder went in support of nutrition programmes (12 percent) and emergency assistance to agriculture (3 percent). After a record allocation of US$15.8 billion in 2022, humanitarian assistance to food sectors declined by 30 percent in 2023, and again in 2024, it pointed out. UNCERTAINTY IN 2025 The funding outlook for development and humanitarian assistance in 2025 and beyond has sharply deteriorated, threatening global partnerships towards sustainable development, said the report. The abrupt termination of funding in early 2025, amid substantial reductions in funding by major donors, has led to closures and disruptions of humanitarian operations in some of the world’s largest and most severe food crises, including Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, South Sudan, the Sudan and Yemen, it noted. “Between 2016 and 2024, around 90 percent of humanitarian funding to the food sectors in countries with food crises came from 16 donors, 75 percent from four, and half from the United States of America.” Changes to funding allocations by any of them can have an important impact on the delivery of critical lifesaving and livelihood-saving assistance, the report warned. The GRFC said if donor funding does not increase from current projections, humanitarian allocations to food sectors in countries/territories with food crises could fall by as much as 45 percent in 2025 with severe impacts on vulnerable populations. Delivery of food assistance could drop significantly in 2025, including in countries/territories with the largest food crises like Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia. This risks pushing people currently receiving assistance into more severe forms of acute food security, said the report. Reductions in official direct assistance – and the associated foreign exchange – also pose broader macroeconomic risks, undermining fiscal capacity and threatening currency stability and access to essential imports, it said. It said an analysis on Malawi showed that while some macroeconomic impacts, especially losses in foreign exchange, may be mitigated by policy measures, the broader decline in welfare is likely to have far-reaching effects, including increases in poverty and malnourishment. Nutrition programmes are also underfunded, with one in four countries facing shortfalls of 75 percent or more, said the report. Just 51 percent of financial assistance for nutrition interventions in humanitarian emergency contexts were met in 2024. Globally, at least 14 million children are expected to face disruptions to nutrition support and services because of funding reductions, leaving them at heightened risk of severe malnutrition and death, the GRFC warned. It also said that funding reductions risk affecting the availability, quality and frequency of data on acute food insecurity, malnutrition and displacement. Lack of information on the people, communities and countries that are affected by food crises limits the capacity of organizations to anticipate, identify and respond to humanitarian needs, it explained. Discontinuity of datasets, such as the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), risks losing bodies of knowledge that informed current action, the report concluded. +
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