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NEW DELHI: The World Food Programme warned Tuesday that the aid Israel is allowing to enter Gaza remains a “drop in the ocean,” days after famine was formally declared in the war-torn Palestinian territory.
The United Nations declared a famine in Gaza on Friday, blaming the “systematic obstruction” of aid by Israel during its nearly two-year war with the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Carl Skau, WFP’s chief operating officer, said that over the past two weeks, there has been a “slight uptick” in aid entering, averaging around 100 trucks per day.
“That’s still a drop in the ocean when we’re talking about assisting some 2.1 million people,” Skau told AFP during a visit to New Delhi.
“We need a completely different level of assistance to be able to turn this trajectory of famine around.”
The Rome-based Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC) said famine was affecting 500,000 people in Gaza.
It defines famine as when 20 percent of households face extreme food shortages, more than 30 percent of children under five are acutely malnourished, and there is an excess mortality threshold of at least two in 10,000 people a day.
Skau painted a grim picture of Gaza.
“The levels of desperation are so high that people keep grabbing the food off our trucks,” the former Swedish diplomat said.
“And when we’re not able to do proper orderly distributions, we’re not sure that we’re reaching the most vulnerable — the women and the children furthest out in the camps,” he said.
“And they’re the ones we really need to reach now, if we want to avoid a full-scale catastrophe.”
But Skau also warned that Gaza was only one of many global crises, with multiple famine zones emerging simultaneously as donor funding collapses.
Some 320 million people globally are now acutely food insecure — nearly triple the figure from five years ago. At the same time, WFP funding has dropped by 40 percent compared with last year.
“Right now, we’re seeing a number of crises that, at any other time in history, would have gotten the headlines and been the top issue discussed,” he said.
That includes Sudan, where 25 million people are “acutely food insecure,” including 10 million in what Skau called “the starvation phase.”
“It’s the largest hunger and humanitarian crisis that we probably have seen in decades — since the end of the 1980s with the Ethiopia famine,” he said.
“We have 10 spots in Sudan where famine has been confirmed. It’s a disaster of unimaginable magnitude.”
He detailed how a UN aid convoy in June tried to break the siege by paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of Sudan’s city of El-Fasher in Darfur, only for the truck convoy to be hit by a deadly drone attack.
Neighbouring South Sudan is also struggling, he said, suggesting “there might well be a third confirmation of a famine.”
“That will be unprecedented,” he said, citing “extremely expensive” operations in the young nation’s Upper Nile state, where, with few roads, aid must be delivered by helicopters or airdrops.
“This is maybe the number one crisis where you have on one hand staggering needs and, frankly, no resources available,” he said.
At the same time, traditional donors have cut aid.
US President Donald Trump slashed foreign aid after taking office, dealing a heavy blow to humanitarian operations worldwide.
“We are in a funding crunch, and the challenge here is that the needs keep going up,” Skau said.
While conflict is the “main driver” of rising hunger levels, other causes include “extreme weather events due to climate change” and the economic shock of trade wars.
“Our worry is that we are now cutting from the hungry to give to the starving,” he said.
Skau said the organization was actively seeking new donors.
“We’re engaging countries like India, Indonesia, Brazil, and others, beyond the more traditional donors, to see how they can also assist.”

LONDON: Two members of Congress visited the Syrian Arab Republic as part of efforts to permanently repeal US sanctions placed on the country during its civil war.

Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Rep. Joe Wilson, a Republican from South Carolina, met with Syria’s transitional president, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, in Damascus on Monday along with other top officials.

They said ending the sanctions placed on the regime of former leader Bashar Assad is crucial to allow the country to recover from years of conflict, and to attract outside investment.

“A Syria that can stand on its own after ridding itself of the Assad regime will be a cornerstone for regional stability in the Middle East,” Shaheen said in a statement. “America is ready to be a partner to a new Syria that moves in the right direction.”

She added: “There is a long way to go, but it’s very positive and the potential is really amazing. The people that we met with were hopeful about the future.”

Wilson told reporters in the US: “I, over the years, have been working with the Syrian-American community, and they’ve always had a dream that one day Damascus would be free, and I believe it has come.”

In May, US President Donald Trump announced a temporary suspension of sanctions placed on Syria for 180 days.

They applied to a raft of measures under the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, which came into force in 2019 affecting the country’s energy, financial and construction industries.

While Trump can extend the pauses on sanctions, new legislation is required to curb them permanently, ending uncertainty about Syria’s economic future.

Shaheen and Wilson intend to do so via the upcoming annual National Defense Authorization Act, adding legislation to the bill that relates to foreign and military policy.

The lifting of sanctions on Syria previously met with some resistance in Congress, with Republican Sen. Jim Risch, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, saying in February: “Too much (US) engagement too soon could create more security dilemmas, but no or too little engagement could give Russia and Iran the ability to wield substantial influence again and also signal the US has no interest, which would be an incorrect assumption.”

However, in April he wrote a letter with Shaheen, the most senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent saying the federal government should “remove barriers to expanded engagement with the Syrian interim government.”

Trump met Al-Sharaa in May in ��������, calling him a “fighter” and a “tough guy” with a “very strong past.” Al-Sharaa is expected to address the UN General Assembly in New York next month.