Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the WFP, said Afghanistan was experiencing its worst malnutrition surge on record following climate-related disasters, a deadly earthquake and the return of millions of Afghans expelled from Iran and Pakistan.“It is a nutrition crisis here in Afghanistan,” Skau told AFP during a visit to the country.

“The surge last year was the worst we’ve ever seen. It’s worse this year.”The WFP estimated in January that around five million Afghan women and children would face life-threatening levels of malnutrition in 2026 in a country of more than 40 million people.

Afghanistan’s conflict-driven border shutdown with Pakistan, which has largely halted cross-border movement for nearly eight months, combined with economic fallout linked to the Iran war, has disrupted regional supply chains and pushed up prices for fuel and essential food commodities.

“If we weren’t struggling with the supply chain, both delays and costs, we would be able to feed a million more children here in Afghanistan,” Skau said.He said thousands of tons of fortified biscuits intended for Afghan schoolchildren had originally been scheduled to transit through Pakistan before border restrictions forced the WFP to reroute supplies through Dubai and Iran.

After conflict intensified in the Middle East, the agency was compelled to redirect shipments again through seven countries, including Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, Georgia and Turkmenistan.“It’s about to arrive this week, but it’s taken months.

It cost us way more,” Skau said.Funding shortages have compounded the crisis. The WFP has secured only eight percent of its targeted funding for Afghanistan this year, limiting its ability to respond to escalating humanitarian needs.

Skau described visiting a rural clinic in eastern Afghanistan where women carrying severely malnourished children waited for hours seeking assistance, only to be turned away because aid stocks had run out.

“We did not have assistance to give them,” he said. “The desperation in the voice of these women will stay with me for a long time.”

The Rome-based World Food Programme (WFP) said the reduction would lower the number of Syrians receiving emergency food aid from 1.3 million people to 650,000. The agency said 7.2 million people in Syria continue to face acute food insecurity even after conditions stabilized following the end of the country’s civil war.

WFP said the cuts were driven entirely by financial constraints rather than improving humanitarian conditions. The agency added that it required $189 million over the next six months to maintain and restore assistance operations in Syria.

“The reduction in WFP’s assistance is driven solely by funding constraints, not by a decrease in needs,” Marianne Ward, WFP director in Syria, said in a statement issued by the agency.

Ward described the current period as a fragile stage in Syria’s recovery, warning that the withdrawal of food assistance would remove a critical safety net for vulnerable communities.

As part of its food support operations, WFP said it had been supplying fortified wheat flour to more than 300 bakeries across Syria under a bread subsidy initiative designed to keep staple food prices affordable for low-income families.

“The bread subsidy program has been a vital lifeline, keeping this staple food affordable,” the agency said.
The funding shortfall is also affecting Syrian refugees in neighboring countries including Jordan and Lebanon, WFP said, as regional humanitarian programs face mounting financial pressure amid rising living costs and prolonged displacement.

“Across the region, vulnerable families are facing the cumulative effects of prolonged crises, rising costs, and shrinking assistance,” Samer Abdeljaber, WFP regional director for the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe, said in the statement.

International humanitarian agencies have repeatedly warned that donor fatigue and competing global crises are straining relief operations in Syria and across the wider Middle East, where millions remain dependent on food assistance more than a decade after conflict erupted.