The United Nations (UN) has been forced to cut food, cash payments and assistance to millions of people due to "a crippling funding crisis" and a drop by about half, an official said.

The deputy executive director of the World Food Program (WFP) said at a press conference, quoted by Lusa, that at least 38 of the 86 countries, including Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and West Africa, where the WFP operates have already been cut or plan to cut assistance soon, at a time when acute hunger is reaching record levels.

Carl Skau pointed out that the WFP has an operational need of 20 billion dollars to provide aid to all those in need, but the aim is to obtain between 10 billion dollars and 14 billion dollars, the amounts received by the agency in recent years.

"We're still aiming for that goal, but this year we've only reached half that amount, around five billion dollars," he said.

According to the UN, humanitarian needs skyrocketed in 2021 and 2022 due to the covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, with global implications. In this sense, "these needs continue to grow, these factors continue to exist, but funding is decreasing. So we expect 2024 to be even more dire."

According to Skau, this year 345 million people remain acutely food insecure, while hundreds of millions of people are at risk of worsening hunger.

The executive director said that conflicts and insecurity remain the main drivers of acute hunger around the world, along with climate change, ongoing disasters, persistent food price inflation and rising debt, all at a time of a slowing global economy.

The WFP is trying to diversify its funding base, but has also appealed to the agency's traditional donors to "come forward and support it at this very difficult time".

Asked why funding is decreasing, Skau said that donors need to be asked.

"But it's clear that aid budgets, humanitarian budgets, both in Europe and the United States, (are) not where they were in 2021-2022," he said.

It will be recalled that in March, Skau indicated that the WFP was forced to cut rations from 75% to 50% for communities in Afghanistan facing emergency levels of hunger, and in May it was forced to cut food for eight million people, or 66% of those it was helping. It is currently helping only five million people.

In Syria, 5.5 million people who depended on the WFP for food were already receiving 50% rations, Skau said. In July, the agency cut off all rations to 2.5 million of them.

In the Palestinian territories, the WFP cut cash assistance by 20% in May and in June and reduced the number of cases by 60%, or 200,000 people. And in Yemen, a huge funding shortfall will force the WFP to cut aid to seven million people as early as August.

In West Africa, where acute hunger is on the rise, most countries are facing major cuts in rations, especially the WFP's seven largest crisis operations: Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad, Central African Republic, Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon, he said.

"Feed cuts are clearly not the way forward," said Skau.

However, Skau urged world leaders to prioritize humanitarian funding and invest in long-term solutions to conflict, poverty, development and other root causes of the current crisis.