World Food Programme Cuts Food Aid to 500,000 People in Gaza as Funding Runs Short

CAIRO/GAZA — The United Nations World Food Programme announced Monday, October 19, that it is being forced into major cuts to its food operation in Gaza, withdrawing monthly assistance from about 500,000 people in a territory where two-thirds of the population already struggle to get enough to eat. The cuts, attributed directly to funding shortages, land one year into a ceasefire agreement that was supposed to begin the territory's reconstruction — and just ahead of a fourth winter for a population still largely without proper shelter or basic services.

What is being cut

The headline number is the monthly caseload: the WFP is reducing the number of people receiving its monthly assistance from 1.6 million to 1.1 million. For the past three years, the agency's food assistance has been a lifeline for up to 90 percent of families in Gaza, and since the ceasefire was announced in October 2025 it had been reaching around 1.6 million people every month with food parcels, wheat flour, bread, hot meals, nutrition support, school snacks and cash assistance. 'WFP no longer has sufficient funding to sustain this level of support,' the agency said.

The reductions run through every part of the programme. Food rations have been halved — families receiving assistance will now get one food parcel instead of two, alongside a smaller bag of wheat flour, and the number of people receiving parcels and ration boxes each month is expected to fall further, from 1.1 million toward 600,000. Cash assistance has been cut for 75,000 families, weakening their ability to buy food in local markets. And the community kitchens that feed people who cannot cook are shrinking fast: daily hot meals drop from 250,000 to 150,000, and families in hard-to-reach areas, including communities near the Yellow Line demarcating Israel's area of military control, will receive a hot meal only every other day instead of daily.

The need that remains

The cuts are falling on one of the most food-insecure populations on earth. The WFP says about 1.4 million people in Gaza — roughly two-thirds of the population — face crisis levels of food insecurity or worse, including approximately 200,000 people in emergency conditions. In other words, even the reduced programme will reach fewer people than the number already classified as being in crisis, and the margin the agency had built since the ceasefire is now being spent down.

Acting WFP executive director Carl Skau, speaking to Reuters in Gaza, described conditions a year after the ceasefire took hold: 'It's a year into the agreement of this ceasefire. Well, life is still brutal here. There is no proper shelter. There is no basic services. There is no safety, no security.' He was blunt about the timing of the funding gap: 'These cuts are happening just as we are facing the fourth winter. You know, I've been through the winters here, absolutely brutal.' His appeal to donors was equally direct: 'We tell the world now is this is not the time to look away. This is the time to step up to sustain this support, to protect the progress that has been made, but also to push for early recovery.'

A ceasefire that has not yet become a recovery

Last year's U.S.-brokered Gaza ceasefire called for the eventual reconstruction of the territory, but Reuters reports that little progress has been made toward implementing the fuller deal to end the conflict, which includes terms for Hamas to disarm and for Israel to withdraw its troops. That stalemate is the backdrop to the aid crisis: humanitarian agencies are being asked to sustain a population in place, indefinitely, on donor funding that is now contracting.

The arithmetic the WFP published Monday is stark. The agency says it urgently needs $450 million over the next six months — October 2026 through March 2027 — to maintain critical operations in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Without it, the trajectory in Monday's announcement continues: fewer recipients, smaller rations, fewer hot meals. For the 500,000 people losing monthly support this month, the question is not whether the cuts are real but what replaces the parcels, flour and kitchen meals that, for three years, have stood between Gaza's families and hunger. Previously will follow the funding response as donor governments react. See our latest world news for continuing coverage.