Already strapped for cash, WFP faces post-USAID future

Even before U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration drastically reduced U.S. foreign aid, citing concerns about efficiency, the United Nations World Food Programme — the world’s largest humanitarian organization — was battling a funding crisis. In 2024, WFP appealed to the international community for $21.1 billion to provide assistance to 150 million hungry and vulnerable people worldwide. By the end of the year, however, it had received just $9.75 billion — less than half of what it needed and below the roughly 60% that has become the norm for U.N. humanitarian appeals. This shortfall was at least an improvement from 2023’s totals, when WFP faced the worst funding gap in its history, securing only $8.3 billion of the $23.5 billion it had requested. The U.S. is not the only donor slashing its aid budget: The United Kingdom and many states in the European Union have also announced major cuts recently. For 2025, WFP projects that it will need $16.9 billion to assist 123 million people. However, according to a document published on Nov. 7, it expects to receive a total of only $8 billion. Meanwhile, the number of acutely food-insecure people worldwide has doubled since 2019, driven by conflicts, economic instability, and climate shocks, with 85% of those facing hunger living in war zones. In 2024, an estimated 343 million people faced food insecurity, roughly equivalent to the entire population of the United States. “What I feel for, first and foremost, is the impact that this has on the vulnerable people on the ground because wherever you look — whether it’s Sudan, the Sahel, Yemen, Ukraine, Afghanistan, and the list goes on — this is just a very, very dire situation for the most vulnerable,” said Manoj Juneja, who was WFP’s chief financial officer for a decade before his retirement in 2023. “Food is amongst those things that you have to have every day. It's not a one-time vaccination. Therefore the need for that regular funding is just so critical for an organization like the World Food Programme to function,” said Juneja. It’s all forcing WFP — which is funded entirely by voluntary contributions from governments, private sector donors, and individuals — to make impossible decisions about who gets food and who goes without. Although the full effects of the United States’ 90-day foreign aid freeze are still coming to light, what’s clear is that those who depend on WFP for their daily meals are being pushed to the brink as rations for people in need are being cut in countries ranging from Bangladesh to Kenya. ‘We have to play God’ Global hunger was declining before the COVID-19 pandemic, but it surged in 2020 and has yet to improve. The pandemic’s economic fallout pushed millions into hardship, driving food prices up and making basic necessities unaffordable for many. Meanwhile, violent conflicts have erupted in many countries, displacing communities and cutting them off from critical food supplies. In 2024, 1.9 million people were on the brink of famine, with the largest numbers concentrated in Gaza, Sudan, South Sudan, Mali, and Haiti. The combination of conflict and economic instability has created logistical nightmares for WFP and its partner aid organizations. "In many places, we are giving less because we don't have the money," said Arif Husain, WFP’s chief economist and director of research, assessments, and monitoring, told Devex in an interview before the Trump administration announced its foreign aid freeze. "In other places, we are giving less because we don't have the access. Bottom line, we are giving less." The lack of funding has severe consequences, forcing WFP to make difficult trade-offs in how aid is distributed. "We reduce rations for basically two broad reasons,” Husain said. “One is to continue to provide assistance to a greater number of people, just at a reduced level. And two, at the same time, try to stretch the resources that we have over a given calendar year." These ration cuts come with grave ethical dilemmas: "It's not like there is a big difference between haves and have-nots … it's barely any difference. We have to play God.” The shifting role of the US For years, WFP has depended on the U.S. as its top donor, with nearly 46% of its 2024 funding coming from Washington. Germany, the second-largest contributor, provided about 10%. But a global drop in humanitarian aid budgets has put the agency under financial strain. "The problem is that everybody is giving less," Husain said. "You're just getting hit from every side, basically. And that's really tough to deal with." Germany slashed aid in 2024, contributing $996 million, down from $1.41 billion in 2021 — though still above its pre-COVID level of $887 million in 2019. Belgium, France, and the Netherlands also made cuts. But WFP’s biggest uncertainty now is the future of U.S. support as Trump and his ally, Elon Musk, reshape foreign aid. In late January, the State Department froze dozens of WFP programs, issuing stop-work orders despite previous assurances that lifesaving aid would be protected. Meanwhile, the U.S. Agency for International Development, a major provider of WFP’s in-kind food aid, also saw operations abruptly halted, stranding hundreds of thousands of metric tons of food stuck in ports and warehouses before being allowed to move again days later. But the disruption isn’t over — the U.S. government still owes organizations nearly $2 billion, including over $820 million to WFP, according to The Washington Post. “Who might replace the United States for this level of funding? It may have been thinkable or even feasible had this happened seven years ago. But I think in the current fiscal and political climate among WFP's traditional donors, this is really very difficult,” said Juneja. Still, there are signs that U.S. support for WFP will persist. Food aid has bipartisan appeal, partly because it benefits U.S. agriculture — programs such as Food for Peace allow American farmers to sell surplus crops to the government, which then distributes them abroad. Some key Trump administration figures have also defended WFP. At her January confirmation hearing, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Elise Stefanik called WFP a “very successful program,” saying it benefits the U.S. from a national security, agribusiness, and workforce perspective. But the Trump administration has signaled a shift in its approach to aid. At a WFP executive board meeting last month, U.S. representatives promised continued generosity in times of crisis but insisted that all assistance must align with U.S. policy. The statement pointed to cuts in WFP programs related to gender ideology, diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and certain climate efforts. “There are items in WFP’s work that we will need to see adjusted to align U.S. funding with this policy,” the statement said. Other U.N. agencies are also under pressure. The U.S. made similar demands of UNICEF, while the International Organization for Migration already started removing DEI language from its websites to avoid U.S. funding cuts. Even if WFP continues receiving U.S. support, a return to previous funding levels appears unlikely. Executive Director Cindy McCain, a Republican who has a history of friction with Trump, acknowledged the funding reality at Davos in January: "I can no longer rely on governments around the world to support WFP in any way. They have the ability to do some, but the truth is the problems are too big. We need the private sector." The agency has increasingly tried to make such inroads. Between 2020 and 2023, the agency secured nearly $1.5 billion in total from private donors, including corporations, foundations, charities, and individuals. While contributions spiked in 2021 and 2022 — which were unusually high funding years across the board — its underlying level of private sector funding has significantly increased, tripling from $101 million in 2019 to $350 million in 2024. Still, private sector donations make up only about 3.5% of WFP’s $9.75 billion in total funding for the year. Scaling up and scaling down WFP also saw rapid growth in recent years, expanding its workforce and budget as global hunger levels surged. The 10 years from 2012 to 2022 “was a decade of tremendous growth in WFP's resources,” Juneja said. But it was “also a decade of strong growth in humanitarian needs for the people that the World Food Programme was reaching.” “In that sense, the growth of the World Food Programme, this impressive growth was only keeping up with the needs of the most vulnerable people and food insecure people in the world.” Following Trump’s first election in 2016, there was concern within WFP that resources could decrease, Juneja said. “That did not happen. In fact, during Trump 1.0, there was an extraordinary increase of funding for the World Food Programme, which doubled over the following five years, from 2017 onwards.” By the end of 2023, the agency had 23,266 employees worldwide — an increase from 19,903 in 2020. Much of this expansion happened under former WFP Executive Director David Beasley, a Republican former governor of South Carolina known for his fundraising prowess. During his tenure, WFP's operating budget grew from $5.8 billion in 2016 to $8.3 billion in 2023, peaking at $14.1 billion in 2022, when a record 349 million people faced acute food insecurity. But 2022 was an anomaly. WFP’s budget surged that year due to the Ukraine war’s shock to global food markets and an unprecedented donor response, particularly from the U.S. Washington alone contributed $7.2 billion, nearly half of WFP’s total funding, thanks to one-time emergency appropriations such as the Additional Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Act. Additional funding from the USAID and U.S. Department of Agriculture, along with the U.S.-backed Grain from Ukraine initiative, further boosted resources. But these emergency streams dried up by 2023, leaving WFP facing a sharp financial downturn even though hunger levels remained high. In 2024, under McCain, WFP found itself in a financial squeeze, prompting cost-cutting measures across the board. The agency froze hiring at its headquarters in Rome, offered separation packages to fixed-term staff, and eliminated several positions, according to a WFP strategy document. “Pretty much every WFP country operation globally already has, is currently, or will go through downsizing. There was such a massive boom and bust in funding since 2021 that it’s pretty much universal,” one WFP worker said on the condition of anonymity. On the last day of February, WFP leadership told staff that it would be closing its regional bureau for southern Africa and consolidating it with its eastern Africa bureau in Nairobi by the end of this year, an official told Devex. Some in the humanitarian sector have questioned whether WFP expanded too aggressively. “It grew too much too quickly recently under Beasley. Now things are catching up,” said another humanitarian official. The effects of these cuts have already been felt on the ground. In Djibouti, WFP has been implementing 30% ration cuts since December 2023. Several field offices in South Sudan were closed over the course of 2023-2024 due to funding constraints. WFP has been forced to cut rations in Yemen and has only been able to reach people in 64 out of the 70 districts targeted, in part because of funding shortages. Afghanistan has been among the hardest-hit countries as WFP faces a deepening funding crisis. With donor contributions falling, the agency has had to halve the number of people it can reach — from nearly 20 million in 2021 and 2022 to just 10 million in 2023 and 2024, said Samir Sudhir Wanmali, WFP’s regional director for Asia and the Pacific, in an interview with Devex in January. In some cases, Wanmali said, families in Afghanistan have been forced to turn to child labor, child marriage, or debt just to survive — a pattern also seen in Ethiopia and Somalia. “WFP provides food assistance in those sorts of places where you'd have other organizations running for the hills, quite frankly,” said Juneja. Its Ebola and COVID-19 response were part of the reason that it received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2020, he said. “Its size gives it the economies of scale and critical mass that no other humanitarian organization providing food assistance would be able to replicate, and despite its size, it's agile and innovative. So in that respect, I would firmly believe that the World Food Programme is irreplaceable in its emergency response.” Rebecca Root contributed reporting.