Funding Shortfall Forces UN Food Agency to Cut Gaza Aid for Half a Million People
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has begun cutting its food assistance in Gaza by roughly a third, ending monthly support for about half a million people, after funding shortages left the agency unable to sustain the level of aid it has delivered since last year's ceasefire.
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, the agency announced on October 19. Families who remain in the programme will receive less: food rations have been cut in half, so households now get one food parcel instead of two, along with a smaller bag of wheat flour. The number of hot meals provided each day has fallen from 250,000 to 150,000, and families in hard-to-reach areas — including near the line of Israeli military control — will receive a hot meal every other day instead of daily. The value of cash assistance has also been reduced for 75,000 families.
Some services continue for now. WFP said it can still support bakeries covering about a third of Gaza's bread needs, provide nutrition assistance to 300,000 women and children, and deliver school snacks to 200,000 children. In the West Bank, where funding pressure is also biting, the agency halved its caseload from 400,000 to 200,000 people in September.
A fragile situation heading into winter
The cuts land at a difficult moment. For the past three years, WFP's assistance has been a lifeline for up to 90 percent of families in Gaza, and since the ceasefire announced in October 2025 the agency had been reaching around 1.6 million people every month with food parcels, flour, bread, hot meals, nutrition support, school snacks and cash. The agency stressed that the reduction reflects a lack of money, not a lack of need: recent modest improvements in food security remain fragile, and winter is approaching.
The latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis projects that more than 1.4 million people — around 67 percent of Gaza's population — will face crisis-level acute food insecurity or worse between July and December 2026, including roughly 200,000 people in emergency conditions.
"It's a year into the agreement of this ceasefire. Well, life is still brutal here. There is no proper shelter. There are no basic services. There is no safety, no security," WFP's acting executive director, Carl Skau, told Reuters during a visit to Gaza. "These cuts are happening just as we are facing the fourth winter. You know, I've been through the winters here, absolutely brutal," he added.
Why it matters
The announcement is part of a wider funding squeeze on humanitarian agencies, as donor budgets tighten while needs remain high in several crises at once. When the world's largest food agency has to halve rations in a territory where two-thirds of the population already struggles to eat adequately, the effects cascade quickly: families skip meals, local markets lose the cash injections that assistance provides, and malnutrition risks rise among children and pregnant women — the groups WFP is trying hardest to keep covered.
It also underscores how far reconstruction still has to go. The ceasefire deal envisages the eventual rebuilding of the territory, but little progress has been made on the broader terms to end the conflict, leaving aid as the main support system for most households.
What happens next
WFP says it urgently needs $450 million over the next six months to maintain critical operations in Gaza and the West Bank. Without new donor money, the agency has signalled that the current reductions may not be the last, and that the remaining caseload and ration sizes could shrink further. Humanitarian officials are watching the coming winter closely, when cold, rain and damaged shelter tend to deepen food and health needs.
Reporting based on the World Food Programme's official announcement and Reuters.