Irrawaddy/AFP-Mar 14
The UN’s World Food Program will be forced to cut off 1 million people in war-torn Myanmar from its vital food aid because of “critical funding shortfalls,” it said Friday. The United States provided the WFP with US$4.4 billion of its $9.7 billion budget in 2024, but Washington’s international aid funding has been slashed under President Donald Trump. Myanmar has been gripped by civil war since a 2021 military coup, plunging it into what the UN describes as a “polycrisis” of mutually compounding conflict, poverty, and instability. It is controlled by a shifting patchwork of junta forces, ethnic armed groups, and pro-democracy partisans that have fractured the economy, driven up poverty, and complicated the supply of aid. The WFP says more than 15 million people in the country of 51 million are unable to meet their daily food needs, with more than 2 million of them “facing emergency levels of hunger.” “More than 1 million people in Myanmar will be cut off from WFP’s lifesaving food assistance starting in April due to critical funding shortfalls,” it said in a statement. The UN warned last year that Rakhine State in Myanmar’s west faces an “imminent threat of acute famine”. The WFP said upcoming cuts would hit 100,000 internally displaced people in Rakhine who will “have no access to food” without its assistance. Trump’s campaign to dismantle U.S. foreign aid contributions has put the humanitarian community into a tailspin. The cuts will come just ahead of Myanmar’s “lean season” between the planting and harvesting of rice, maize, and vegetables, which lasts from July to September. The WFP says it “urgently needs $60 million to maintain its life-saving food assistance to the people of Myanmar this year.” Read more at:
https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/world/wfp-to-cut-food-aid-to-1-million-people-in-myanmar.html
