Why Global Cuts Are Deepening Hunger and Instability

Across the world, millions of people are slipping further into hunger and malnutrition. The Global Report on Food Crises indicates that acute food insecurity has increased for the sixth consecutive year, with over 295 million people in 53 countries facing severe hunger in 2024. The outlook for 2025 reveals to be dire: the UN World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that at least 319 million people will struggle to meet their basic food needs and 13.7 million are at risk of being pushed from IPC 3 into emergency levels of food insecurity at IPC4 (highest level of food insecurity).

This worsening hunger crisis comes at a time when the global humanitarian system is facing a historic shortfall in funding.

As international donors scale back their development budgets, humanitarian organisations face impossible choices about who to feed and who to turn away. The WFP anticipates a 40 per cent drop in available funding this year, decreasing from USD 9.8 billion in 2024 to USD 6.4 billion in 2025. The Global Nutrition Cluster estimates a $437 million shortfall in humanitaran nutrition programming across 20 countries.

This funding fall is not simply a numbers issue. Behind each dollar held back lies a mother skipping meals, a child dropping out of school, or a family uprooted in search of food. As Director of Food Security and Nutrition at WFP Jean-Martin Bauer noted during the Webinar, ‘A Lifeline at Risk: Understanding the Impacts of Cuts to Foreign Assistance’, “The number of people experiencing the most severe levels of hunger, what we call IPC 5, or catastrophic, life-threatening hunger, has increased twentyfold over the past six years. All the indicators show that global food insecurity is worsening, and this deepening crisis comes just as the humanitarian community faces a major funding shortfall.”

Unpacking the Consequences:

In response to this funding emergency, WFP commissioned a two-phase study to assess the implications of shrinking aid budgets on global food security. The findings are sobering. The first phase revealed that cuts of this scale could severely undermine the world’s collective ability to combat the global food crisis and achieve SDG2. The second phase, focusing on six countries —Afghanistan, Haiti, Niger, South Sudan, Uganda, and Yemen—sheds light on what these reductions mean at the community level.

While each country tells a different story, the pattern is consistent. Food and nutrition indicators are deteriorating, and humanitarian safety nets are faltering in all areas where funding has been reduced.

A System Under Strain

A recently convened webinar discussion with global food and humanitarian actors made clear that the humanitarian system is under pressure as never before. Reduced resources are creating a vacuum — one that risks leaving millions without the support they need to survive.

Women, children, and internally displaced people suffer the most from this crisis. When assistance is cut, families resort to desperate coping mechanisms, including reducing meal sizes, selling assets, or engaging in unsafe practices that prolong suffering.

A Field Report from Afghanistan

Imagine being a mother who goes to a health clinic with their sick child, only to be told they will not be helped because aid centers are closing and operations can only focus on the most critically ill. That’s the story of Afghanistan.

Acute hunger and malnutrition are soaring in Afghanistan this year. While this is true in many places, John Aylieff, WFP’s Country Director for Afghanistan noted the devastating impact that aid cuts are piling on the Afghan people who face multiple shocks.

“Around two million Afghans have been forcibly returned from neighbouring countries — that’s two million more mouths to feed, and the loss of vital remittances for some of the most vulnerable families,” he said.

Additionally, a severe drought has cut across more than half of the country, and an earthquake in the east has added to the strain.

“But the most critical shock is the dramatic reduction in food and humanitarian assistance due to funding cuts. In recent months, WFP has been forced to turn away 9 out of 10 people facing acute hunger. Across all partners, needs are rising, yet the means to respond are shrinking,” worried Aylieff.

The Wider Consequences

Beyond immediate hunger and malnutrition, the ripple effects threaten stability at local, national, and global levels. This funding crisis, then, is not only humanitarian, it is systemic. It risks reversing hard-won development gains, undermining resilience, peace-building and eroding trust in global solidarity at a time when cooperation is most needed.

“The humanity argument alone only goes so far. It’s equally about preventing the migration and instability that short-term hunger tends to provoke — and that is certainly the case in many of the contexts we’ve been discussing today,” noted Aylieff, reflecting on his years of experience working, not just in Afghanistan, but many parts of the world in his 33 year-long career of saving lives.

As funding shrinks, humanitarian operations are forced to hyper-prioritise needs, directing scant resources to saving lives and forgoing critical resilience building programming that is vital to preventing the worsening of food and nutrition security.

Due to the aid cuts, “we are abandoning far more cost-effective solutions that could help us get ahead of the problem. Over the past couple of decades, we’ve seen tremendous progress in empowering community health workers to deliver treatment and nutrition support,” noted Jeanette Bailey, Global Practice Lead and Director of Research for Nutrition, International Rescue Committee. She lamented that scaling back such interventions risks losing all the progress made over the years.

A Call to Action

The data is clear, but so too is the moral imperative. As SDG2 Advocacy Hub CEO, Paul Newnham reflected in his closing remarks: if the world fails to act now, the cost will not only be measured in funding shortfalls, but also in human lives lost and futures foregone. “Hunger and malnutrition are not mere tragedies. These reflect a failure of leadership. Hunger is human-made – but so are the solutions,” said Paul. With the right humanitarian and development investments and policies, we can turn the tide and break the cycle of crises.

Governments, donors, and partners must renew their commitments to those left furthest behind and rethink how the international system can deliver in an era of constrained resources.