WFP warns food insecurity in Gaza ‘will deteriorate’ without more funding, aid, calls recent gains ‘fragile’

The UN World Food Program (WFP) on Friday warned that food insecurity in Gaza will worsen unless additional funding is secured to sustain humanitarian assistance, describing recent improvements as “fragile” despite signs that emergency aid has helped ease hunger, Anadolu reports.

“The situation will deteriorate,” Ross Smith, WFP’s director of emergency preparedness and response, said in response to Anadolu’s question during a UN briefing in Geneva.

Smith said the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report showed the number of people facing acute food insecurity had fallen to 1.4 million from 1.6 million, reflecting about a 10% improvement.

“But it’s critical that these findings are understood correctly. It’s not a story of recovery; it’s a story that humanitarian assistance is working,” he said. ” It does not mean that our job is done, and it does not mean that people in Gaza are no longer at risk”

He stressed that more than 200,000 people remain in IPC Phase 4 (Emergency), particularly in areas near what he described as the “yellow line” and “orange line.”

“If we don’t get additional support and we have to reduce assistance, then people, the situation will deteriorate,” Smith said, adding that updated projections would depend on how conditions develop over the coming months.

He said funding has now become “the greatest threat” to food security in Gaza, overtaking humanitarian access constraints.

According to Smith, WFP needs more than $420 million to sustain operations across Gaza and the occupied West Bank through the end of the year.

The agency has already begun reducing assistance, cutting cash transfers by 25% this month and halving food rations for 220,000 households, he said.

READ: 1.4M people in Gaza expected to face ‘high levels of acute food insecurity’ by year’s-end: IPC

Without additional funding, WFP will have to make “very significant cuts” to its assistance by October, Smith warned.

“Preventing a return to what we saw last year, preventing a return to a famine situation is far less costly, both financially but also in human terms, than trying to pull families back from that situation again,” he said.

An estimated 1.4 million people in Gaza are expected to face “high levels of acute food insecurity” through December 2026, up from 1.2 million during the mid-April to June period, despite improvements driven by humanitarian assistance, according to a new Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis released on Thursday.

The IPC said the number of people experiencing crisis (Phase 3) or worse conditions is projected to rise to 67% of Gaza’s population, while 212,000 people are expected to remain in emergency (Phase 4). All five governorates are classified in crisis.

The report said expanded humanitarian assistance following the October 2025 ceasefire helped improve food security and nutrition, with food aid reaching about 1.49 million people in May. However, it warned that rations remain insufficient, livelihoods have collapsed, and 83% of households report having no source of income, leaving most families dependent on external assistance.

The IPC cautioned that recent gains remain “highly fragile” as humanitarian assistance has declined since February because of funding constraints and uncertainty surrounding the operations of international aid organizations. It warned that, without humanitarian food assistance, an estimated 1.9 million people — about 90% of Gaza’s population — would face high levels of acute food insecurity through December.

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