Funding cuts force WFP to drastically reduce lifesaving assistance in Gaza
Photo: WFP/Mohamed Hinnawi. “We spent a whole week without bread. This bag of flour means everything to me. It means life,” says a woman, who now lives in displacement in Al Saraya Camp after losing three sons, her husband, and her home during the war. With no steady income, food assistance helps her bake bread and prepare simple meals from flour, rice, lentils, and chickpeas.
GAZA – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today announced that funding shortages have forced it to reduce food assistance in Gaza by around one-third: half a million people will lose access to critical assistance. The cuts come as winter approaches and recent modest improvements in food security remain fragile.
For the past three years, WFP’s food assistance has provided a lifeline for up to 90 percent of families in Gaza. Since the ceasefire was announced in October 2025, the agency has been reaching around 1.6 million people every month with food parcels, wheat flour, bread, hot meals, nutrition support, school snacks and cash assistance. WFP no longer has sufficient funding to sustain this level of support.
Cuts to WFP assistance in Gaza
From this month, WFP is supporting 1.1 million of the most vulnerable people in Gaza with food and cash assistance, down from 1.6 million last month.
WFP has cut food rations by half. Families receiving food assistance will now receive only one food parcel (instead of two) and a smaller bag of wheat flour.
The number of hot meals WFP provides has been reduced from 250,000 to 150,000 a day. Families living in hard-to-reach areas, including near the yellow line of Israeli military control, will receive a hot meal every other day instead of daily.
WFP has also reduced the value of cash assistance provided to 75,000 families.
For now, WFP is able to continue supporting bakeries that cover one-third of Gaza’s bread needs, provide nutrition assistance to 300,000 women and children and deliver healthy school snacks to 200,000 children.
Funding shortfalls are also affecting WFP operations in the West Bank, where the agency halved the number of people receiving assistance by half – from 400,000 to 200,000 – in September.
Food security in Gaza
An estimated 1.4 million people, or 67 percent of Gaza’s population, are experiencing acute food insecurity at crisis levels or worse, classified as Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Phase 3 or above.
This is down from 1.6 million people, or 77 percent of the population, at the end of 2025. However, the improvement remains modest and fragile.
Around 200,000 people remain in Emergency conditions (IPC Phase 4) where immediate food assistance is needed to prevent deaths from hunger.
Only one in five children consumes a sufficiently diverse diet. Access to health, water, sanitation and hygiene services also remains limited.
More than 80 percent of people in Gaza are unemployed, leaving many families unable to afford fresh produce or protein-rich foods even when they are available.
Funding and operational challenges
Improved humanitarian access and delivery of assistance since October 2025 have helped reduce food insecurity, but these gains remain fragile and could quickly be reversed if humanitarian funding continues to decline. The latest IPC analysis warns that reductions in humanitarian assistance could drive a sharp increase in food assistance needs.
As winter approaches, additional resources are urgently needed to sustain emergency food assistance, provide critical engineering support and prevent malnutrition among young children and pregnant and breastfeeding women.
WFP received less than half as much funding for its Palestine operation in 2026 as in previous years. The agency urgently requires USD 450 million to maintain critical operations in Gaza and the West Bank over the next six months, from October 2026 to March 2027.