The World Food Program funding crisis has reduced aid to 2.5 million of the 5.5 million people who depend on aid agencies.
The UN food agency has said it will cut aid to Syrians in need of basic food by about half due to a lack of funding.
“An unprecedented funding crisis in Syria is forcing the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) to cut aid to 2.5 million of the 5.5 million people who depend on the agency for basic food,” the organization said Tuesday.
The announcement comes as the European Union prepares to host the seventh conference in Brussels on “Supporting the Future of Syria and the Region” on Wednesday.
It said it made the decision “after all other options had been exhausted” and planned to expand its “extremely limited” resources by prioritizing “three million Syrians who cannot make it overnight without food aid”.
The WFP said that if it continued to provide aid to 5.5 million people, it would “run out of food altogether by October”.
“Instead of scaling up or even keeping pace with increasing needs, we are facing the bleak scenario of depriving people of assistance at the exact time they need it most,” says Kenn Crossley , WFP’s representative in Syria.
Syria’s 12-year war erupted after President Bashar al-Assad suppressed peaceful anti-government demonstrations, escalated into a deadly conflict that attracted foreign powers and armed fighters from around the world.
The conflict has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions of people.
In February, parts of Syria and Turkey were hit hard by devastating earthquakes that killed more than 50,000 people on both sides of the border. Even before the earthquakes, 12.1 million people across Syria were starving, the UN agency said.
Syria is also still recovering from the devastation of the coronavirus pandemic, which has deepened the existing economic crisis and pushed prices to record highs. The WFP said that currently “an average monthly income covers only about a quarter of a family’s food needs”, and that even those who regularly received food aid from them were already struggling to make ends meet.
The agency first attempted to gradually reduce the size of monthly rations by half, but this proved unsustainable with rising fuel and food costs not matched by funding.
“Further reductions in ration size are impossible. Our only solution is to reduce the number of recipients. The people we serve have endured the ravages of conflict, fled their homes, lost family members and their livelihoods. Without our help, their hardships will only increase,” Crossley said.