Journal De Bruxelles - Funding cuts force WFP to stop food aid to one million in Myanmar

The United States provided the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) with $4.4 billion of its $9.7 billion budget in 2024 but Washington's international aid funding has been slashed under President Donald Trump.

Myanmar has been gripped by civil war following a 2021 military coup, plunging it into what the United Nations describes as a "polycrisis" of mutually compounding conflict, poverty and instability.

It is controlled by a shifting patchwork of junta forces, ethnic armed groups and pro-democracy partisans that have fractured the economy, driven up poverty and complicated the supply of aid.

The WFP says more than 15 million people in the country of 51 million are unable to meet their daily food needs, with more than two million "facing emergency levels of hunger".

"More than one million people in Myanmar will be cut off from WFP's lifesaving food assistance starting in April due to critical funding shortfalls," it said in a statement.

"These cuts come just as increased conflict, displacement and access restrictions are already sharply driving up food aid needs," it said.

The statement did not mention the United States by name or any other donor countries.

But the WFP's Myanmar director Michael Dunford told AFP the organisation was "short of the funding because a whole range of different donors have not been able to meet our requirements".

"This includes the US, but it's definitely not only the US," he said.

Without immediate new funding, the WFP said it will have to cut aid to vulnerable groups including children under five, pregnant and breastfeeding women and the disabled -- assisting only 35,000 of them.

The UN warned last year that Rakhine state in Myanmar's west faces an "imminent threat of acute famine".

WFP said the upcoming cuts would hit 100,000 internally displaced people in Rakhine -- including members of the persecuted Rohingya minority -- who will "have no access to food" without its assistance.

"The people, as we inform them of the reduction in the ration levels, are very anxious," said Dunford.

"They're asking us, 'Well what are we going to do now?'"

- 'Lean season' -

Trump's scheme to slash federal spending has been spearheaded by Elon Musk, his top donor and the world's richest person, and the targeting of US foreign aid contributions has put the humanitarian community into a tailspin.

The US president has claimed the US Agency for International Development (USAID) is "run by radical lunatics", while Musk has described it as a "criminal organisation" that needs to be put "through the woodchipper".

USAID has a $42.8 billion budget, with health and emergency programs in around 120 countries, and is a major contributor to the WFP.

In neighouring Bangladesh, UN chief Antonio Guterres on Friday met Rohingya who fled Myanmar and are also threatened by aid cuts.

One million Rohingya live in a string of camps along the border after escaping a 2017 military crackdown which some rights groups describe as a genocide.

Funding shortfalls will require a cut in monthly food vouchers in the camps from $12.50 to $6.00 per person at the camps, the WFP announced this month.

The cuts inside Myanmar will come just ahead of the "lean season" between the planting and harvesting of rice, maize and vegetables, which lasts from July to September.

The WFP says it "urgently needs $60 million to maintain its life-saving food assistance to the people of Myanmar this year".

A.Parmentier--JdB