World

Global hunger crisis deepens as major nations skimp on aid

The U.S. plays the leading role in preventing and combating starvation across the world. It provided $64.5 billion in humanitarian aid over the last five years. That was at least 38% of the total such contributions recorded by the U.N.

Published

2 years ago

December 25, 2024

Ariana News

It’s a simple but brutal equation: The number of people going hungry or otherwise struggling around the world is rising, while the amount of money the world’s wealthiest nations are contributing toward helping them is dropping, Reuters reported.

The result: The United Nations says that, at best, it will be able to raise enough money to help about 60% of the 307 million people it predicts will need humanitarian aid next year. That means at least 117 million people won’t get food or other assistance in 2025.

The U.N. also will end 2024 having raised about 46% of the $49.6 billion it sought for humanitarian aid across the globe, its own data shows. It’s the second year in a row the world body has raised less than half of what it sought. The shortfall has forced humanitarian agencies to make agonizing decisions, such as slashing rations for the hungry and cutting the number of people eligible for aid.

The consequences are being felt in places like Syria, where the World Food Program (WFP), the U.N.’s main food distributor, used to feed 6 million people. Eyeing its projections for aid donations earlier this year, the WFP cut the number it hoped to help there to about 1 million people, said Rania Dagash-Kamara, the organization’s assistant executive director for partnerships and resource mobilization.

Dagash-Kamara visited the WFP’s Syria staff in March. “Their line was, ‘We are at this point taking from the hungry to feed the starving,’” she said in an interview.

U.N. officials see few reasons for optimism at a time of widespread conflict, political unrest and extreme weather, all factors that stoke famine. “We have been forced to scale back appeals to those in most dire need,” Tom Fletcher, U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, told Reuters.

The funding gap

Conflict, extreme weather and soaring inflation have left growing numbers of people in need of humanitarian aid. Also increasing is the gap between the funding the U.N. seeks for humanitarian relief and the amount donors actually provide, read the report.

Financial pressures and shifting domestic politics are reshaping some wealthy nations’ decisions about where and how much to give. One of the U.N.’s largest donors – Germany – already shaved $500 million in funding from 2023 to 2024 as part of general belt tightening. The country’s cabinet has recommended another $1 billion reduction in humanitarian aid for 2025. A new parliament will decide next year’s spending plan after the federal election in February.

Humanitarian organizations also are watching to see what U.S. President-elect Donald Trump proposes after he begins his second term in January.

Trump advisers have not said how he will approach humanitarian aid, but he sought to slash U.S. funding in his first term. And he has hired advisers who say there is room for cuts in foreign aid.

SHARING THE WEALTH

The majority of humanitarian funding comes from just three wealthy donors: the U.S., Germany and the European Commission. They provided 58% of the $170 billion recorded by the U.N. in response to crises from 2020 to 2024.

Three other powers – China, Russia and India – collectively contributed less than 1% of U.N.-tracked humanitarian funding over the same period, according to a Reuters review of U.N. contributions data.

The inability to close the funding gap is one of the major reasons the global system for tackling hunger and preventing famine is under enormous strain. The lack of adequate funding – coupled with the logistical hurdles of assessing need and delivering food aid in conflict zones, where many of the worst hunger crises exist – is taxing efforts to get enough aid to the starving. Almost 282 million people in 59 countries and territories were facing high levels of acute food insecurity in 2023. Reuters is documenting the global hunger-relief crisis in a series of reports, including from hard-hit Sudan, Myanmar and Afghanistan, Reuters reported.

The failure of major nations to pull their weight in funding for global initiatives has been a persistent Trump complaint. Project 2025, a set of policy proposals drawn up by Trump backers for his second term, calls on humanitarian agencies to work harder to collect more funding from other donors and says this should be a condition for additional U.S. aid.

On the campaign trail, Trump tried to distance himself from the controversial Project 2025 blueprint. But after winning the election, he chose one of its key architects, Russell Vought, to run the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, a powerful body that helps decide presidential priorities and how to pay for them. For secretary of state, the top U.S. diplomat, he tapped Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who has a record of supporting foreign aid.

Project 2025 makes particular note of conflict – the very factor driving most of today’s worst hunger crises.

“Humanitarian aid is sustaining war economies, creating financial incentives for warring parties to continue fighting, discouraging governments from reforming, and propping up malign regimes,” the blueprint says. It calls for deep cuts in international disaster aid by ending programs in places controlled by “malign actors.”

Billionaire Elon Musk has been tapped by Trump to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a new body that will examine waste in government spending. Musk said this month on his social media platform, X, that DOGE would look at foreign aid.

The aid cuts Trump sought in his first term didn’t pass Congress, which controls such spending. Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and close Trump ally on many issues, will chair the Senate committee that oversees the budget. In 2019, he called “insane” and “short-sighted” a Trump proposal to cut the budget for foreign aid and diplomacy by 23%.

Graham, Vought, Rubio and Musk did not respond to questions for this report.

OLYMPICS AND SPACESHIPS

So many people have been hungry in so many places for so long that humanitarian agencies say fatigue has set in among donors. Donors receive appeal after appeal for help, yet have limits on what they can give. This has led to growing frustration with major countries they view as not doing their share to help.

Jan Egeland was U.N. humanitarian chief from 2003 to 2006 and now heads the Norwegian Refugee Council, a nongovernmental relief group. Egeland said it is “crazy” that a tiny country like Norway is among the top funders of humanitarian aid. With a 2023 gross national income (GNI) less than 2% the size of America’s, Norway ranked seventh among governments who gave to the U.N. that year, according to a Reuters review of U.N. aid data. It provided more than $1 billion.

Two of the five biggest economies – China and India – gave a tiny fraction as much.

China ranked 32nd among governments in 2023, contributing $11.5 million in humanitarian aid. It has the world’s second-largest GNI.

India ranked 35th that year, with $6.4 million in humanitarian aid. It has the fifth-largest GNI.

How aid stacks up

The United States and Germany were top donors in 2023.

Norway gave the most in aid when adjusted for the contributing nation’s gross national income.

Egeland noted that China and India each invested far more in the type of initiatives that draw world attention. Beijing spent billions hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics, and India spent $75 million in 2023 to land a spaceship on the moon.

“How come there is not more interest in helping starving children in the rest of the world?” Egeland said. “These are not developing countries anymore. They are having Olympics … They are having spaceships that many of the other donors never could dream of.”

Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said China has always supported the WFP. He noted that it feeds 1.4 billion people within its own borders. “This in itself is a major contribution to world food security,” he said.

India’s ambassador to the U.N. and its Ministry of External Affairs did not respond to questions for this report.

To analyze giving patterns, Reuters used data from the U.N.’s Financial Tracking Service, which records humanitarian aid. The service primarily catalogs money for U.N. initiatives and relies on voluntary reporting. It doesn’t list aid funneled elsewhere, including an additional $255 million that Saudi Arabia reported giving this year through its own aid organization, the King Salman Humanitarian Aid & Relief Centre.

RESTRICTIONS AND DELAYS

When aid does come, it is sometimes late, and with strings attached, making it hard for humanitarian organizations to respond flexibly to crises.

Aid tends to arrive “when the animals are dead, people are on the move, and children are malnourished,” said Julia Steets, director of the Global Public Policy Institute, a think tank based in Berlin.

Steets has helped conduct several U.N.-sponsored evaluations of humanitarian responses. She led one after a drought-driven hunger crisis gripped Ethiopia from 2015 to 2018. The report concluded that while famine was avoided, funding came too late to prevent a huge spike in severe acute malnutrition in children. Research shows that malnutrition can have long-term effects on children, including stunted growth and reduced cognitive abilities.

Further frustrating relief efforts are conditions that powerful donors place on aid. Donors dictate details to humanitarian agencies, down to where food will go. They sometimes limit funding to specific U.N. entities or nongovernmental organizations. They often require that some money be spent on branding, such as displaying donors’ logos on tents, toilets and backpacks.

Aid workers say such earmarking has forced them to cut rations or aid altogether.

The U.S. has a long-standing practice of placing restrictions on nearly all of its contributions to the World Food Program, one of the largest providers of humanitarian food assistance. More than 99% of U.S. donations to the WFP carried restrictions in each of the last 10 years, according to WFP data reviewed by Reuters.

Asked about the aid conditions, a spokesperson for the U.S. Agency for International Development, which oversees American humanitarian spending, said the agency acts “in accordance with the obligations and standards required by Congress.”

Those standards aim to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of humanitarian aid, the spokesperson said, and aid conditions are meant to maintain “an appropriate measure of oversight to ensure the responsible use of U.S. taxpayer funds.”

Some current and former officials with donor organizations defend their restrictions. They point to theft and corruption that have plagued the global food aid system.

In Ethiopia, as Reuters has detailed, massive amounts of aid from the U.N. World Food Program were diverted , in part because of the organization’s lax administrative controls. An internal WFP report on Sudan identified a range of problems in the organization’s response to an extreme hunger crisis there, Reuters reported earlier this month, including an inability to react adequately and what the report described as “anti-fraud challenges.”

The U.N. has a “zero tolerance policy” toward “interferences” that disrupt aid and is working with donors to manage risks, said Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Solving the U.N.’s broader fundraising challenges will require a change in its business model, said Martin Griffiths, who stepped down as U.N. humanitarian relief chief in June. “Obviously, what we need to do is to have a different source of funding.”

In 2014, Antonio Guterres, now the U.N.’s secretary-general and then head of its refugee agency, suggested a major change that would charge U.N. member states fees to fund humanitarian initiatives, Reuters reported.

The U.N.’s budget and peacekeeping missions already are funded by a fee system. Such funding would offer humanitarian agencies more flexibility in responding to need.

The U.N. explored Guterres’ idea in 2015. But donor countries preferred the current system, which lets them decide case by case where to send contributions, according to a U.N. report on the proposal.

Laerke said the U.N. is working to diversify its donor base.

“We can’t just rely on the same club of donors, generous as they are and appreciative as we are of them,” Laerke said.

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White House reinstates access to CNN, MS NOW and Politico following judge’s order

Published

12 hours ago

September 25, 2026

Ariana News

The White House said on Thursday it has reinstated journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico after a federal judge deemed US President Donald Trump’s ban of the three news outlets likely unconstitutional and ordered their access immediately restored.

The midday reinstatement came after a chaotic few hours earlier on Thursday when the journalists continued to be blocked from entering the White House grounds. That prompted ‌the three news organizations to request an immediate hearing before US District Judge Tim Kelly, who issued his decision overnight, Reuters reported.

Kelly, acting in a lawsuit brought by CNN, MS NOW and Politico on Monday, ordered a halt to Trump’s ban for 14 days in a press freedom case that has played out over the past week in the courtroom and White House grounds.

Kelly found that the revocation of the White House credentials of the journalists “likely violated their constitutional due process rights.”

The judge, who Trump appointed in 2017 during his first presidential term, also raised doubts about the US Justice Department’s national security arguments for justifying the ban, noting that Trump himself had said the action was due to what the president alleged was false or negative coverage.

Hours after Kelly issued his order, CNN, MS NOW and Politico told the judge they remained barred, and asked for the emergency hearing. Politico said its reporter’s credentials were confiscated. An MS NOW reporter said she was blocked from the White House. CNN ⁠said some of its staff members were denied entry onto the grounds.

In response, Micah Stopperich, the director of press operations at the White House, said in a court filing that the White House began the process of reinstating press badges for affected reporters at 7:25 a.m., and that the “White House press team dropped badges at the entry gate for members of the press to pick up around 9:55 a.m.”

After receiving Stopperich’s declaration, the judge denied the request by the news organizations for an emergency hearing but gave them an opportunity to inform him of any factual developments later in the day.

The sharpest conflict yet between Trump and the press played out during a key diplomatic moment for the US president: his appearance at the United Nations General Assembly in New York and his hosting of Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday.

A source familiar with the White House television press pool said its members would not reinstate their coverage until the White House formally reinstates CNN to the pool. Earlier this week, they had suspended pooled coverage in solidarity with CNN.

There were no TV pool cameras set up for Xi’s arrival on the White House’s South Lawn on Thursday morning, and FOX News, MS NOW and CNN did not air the two leaders’ arrival ceremony live.

During Trump’s welcome of Xi to the White House, the president made a joke to photographers in the Oval Office about the Chinese having the friendliest press corps.

CNN is one of the five news organizations – along with ABC, CBS, FOX News and NBC – that make up the primary White House television pool. ‌They share the ⁠costs of covering the president, take turns organizing coverage and provide footage to other outlets.

CNN had been scheduled to cover Trump’s trip to New York for the General Assembly on Monday, but was not able to provide a pool feed.

NATIONAL SECURITY CONCERNS

Trump announced the ban on Friday on his social media platform, saying those news organizations “shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States.” Trump framed their reporting as a threat to US national security.

The three outlets sued Trump and other members of his administration, saying the ban violated the US Constitution’s First Amendment protections for free speech and a free press, as well as their due process rights. A coalition of press freedom groups and dozens of news organizations, including Reuters, later filed a legal brief supporting the three news outlets.

Kelly ordered the Trump administration ⁠to immediately return the outlets’ press passes and stop enforcing the ban for two weeks. The judge rejected the administration’s stated national security concerns.

“The record lacks factual support for defendants’ contention that the revocation of plaintiffs’ hard passes will in fact protect national security or that national security will be endangered if the court orders their passes reinstated while this litigation proceeds,” Kelly wrote.

In a filing on Tuesday, the Justice Department accused the outlets of threatening national security with their coverage, citing stories about US missile stockpiles, construction of Trump’s White House ballroom and turnout at the recent ⁠Republican midterm convention.

Theodore Boutrous, an attorney for the three outlets, welcomed the judge’s decision in a statement, saying: “This is a strong ruling vindicating freedom of the press, due process and the rule of law. We greatly appreciate the court’s swift action.”

TENSIONS WITH THE PRESS

Although other presidential administrations have battled with the press, Trump’s campaign against the media has been unprecedented. Upending decades of tradition, his White House had denied basic access to many major news organizations, launched personal attacks on journalists and filed multiple lawsuits against news organizations.

Kelly’s ruling ⁠came a day after Trump experienced another legal setback.

On Wednesday, an Iowa judge dismissed Trump’s 2024 lawsuit against the Des Moines Register newspaper and pollster J. Ann Selzer. Trump sued the Register, its parent company Gannett and Selzer over a poll published ahead of the November 2024 US election that showed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris leading him in Iowa. Trump accused the newspaper and its longtime pollster of fraudulently misleading readers.

In his ruling Wednesday, Iowa District Judge Scott Beattie said the poll was legally protected speech.

World

Trump welcomes Chinese President Xi as US-China summit gets underway

WATCH: ▶️ Trump’s decision to meet Xi at Joint Base Andrews airport marked the first time since 1962 that a US president has personally welcomed a foreign leader at the base.

Published

1 day ago

September 24, 2026

Ariana News

US President Donald Trump welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping to Washington with a high-profile military ceremony, as the two leaders begin a three-day summit focused on trade, technology and other major areas of tension between the two countries.

Xi arrived at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Wednesday evening, where Trump and First Lady Melania Trump personally greeted him and his wife, Peng Liyuan.

The Chinese leader was welcomed with a red carpet, a military honor guard, marching band and a flyover by two US B-1 bombers. Trump’s decision to meet Xi at the airport marked the first time since 1962 that a US president has personally welcomed a foreign leader at the base.

Xi’s visit to Washington is his first since 2015 and comes as the two countries seek to maintain a fragile trade truce.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Wednesday that Washington and Beijing had agreed to extend their current trade truce until January. The arrangement had been due to expire on 10 November.

The agreement has involved the US lowering tariffs on some Chinese goods in exchange for China easing restrictions on exports of rare earth minerals.

Bessent said discussions with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng also covered the possibility of reaching a broader trade agreement.

In a statement carried by China’s state news agency Xinhua, Xi said the US and China should be “partners rather than rivals”, adding that cooperation between the two countries could benefit the world.

The summit is expected to address a wide range of issues, including trade and tariffs, rare earth minerals, agricultural exports, artificial intelligence, Taiwan and the ongoing conflict involving Iran.

Trump is expected to seek increased Chinese purchases of US agricultural products, greater access to Chinese rare earth minerals and lower Chinese tariffs on American goods.

Taiwan is also expected to feature in the talks, with Beijing opposing US arms sales to the self-governing island.

Xi is travelling with senior Chinese officials including Cai Qi, a member of the Communist Party’s Politburo Standing Committee, Vice Premier He Lifeng and Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

The Chinese president is expected to attend a state dinner at the White House on Thursday, with leaders from the US artificial intelligence industry among the guests.

The two countries are competing for greater influence in AI, while also debating the regulation and potential risks associated with the technology.

Xi’s visit will conclude on Friday.

World

Trump warns in UN speech he could ‘annihilate’ Iran without peace deal

Members of the Cuban delegation walked out of the hall as Trump referenced his pressure campaign against the country.

Published

2 days ago

September 23, 2026

Ariana News

US President Donald Trump used his UN General Assembly speech on Tuesday to make the case for his war on Iran, arguing he has prevented Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and warning that he could “annihilate the Islamic Republic” if no deal is reached to end ‌the conflict, Reuters reported.

While predicting his administration would strike a peace deal with Iran following the November 3 US midterm elections, Trump called on other nations to join America in isolating Iran economically to force it to the negotiating table.

“I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before?” Trump said. “Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?”

He later told reporters at the United Nations that US officials had held a “very good” three-hour meeting with the Iranian delegation on Tuesday. He subsequently appeared to clarify that special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had met with mediators rather than Iranian officials directly.

“Steve and Jared had a very productive meeting today with mediators of Iran, merely mediators,” he told reporters at the start of a meeting with Gulf leaders ⁠at the UN. “Let’s see what happens with that.”

Since returning to office last year for a second term, Trump has sent waves through the global order, joining Israel to attack Iran, ordering a raid on Venezuela that captured the country’s leader, and threatening to seize Greenland.

In a 37-minute speech ahead of a whirlwind diplomatic schedule that included meetings with the leaders of Britain, Ukraine and Japan, Trump laid out his foreign policy vision, arguing that the Iran war had spared the world the threat of a nuclear-armed menace while asserting US dominance in the Western Hemisphere is essential to preventing crises from taking root.

“Our actions in Venezuela are proof that the United States will no longer permit threats to America to gain a foothold anywhere in the Western Hemisphere,” Trump said. “While others have spoken of peace, I have made peace.”

Outside the UN headquarters, dozens of anti-Iranian-government demonstrators gathered, a few of them holding up signs calling for democracy and decrying dictatorship.

Trump brushed aside suggestions that the midterm elections, in which his Republican Party risks losing control of Congress, could constrain his handling of the war. Some analysts have argued that a Democratic takeover of the legislature would weaken his leverage in the conflict.

“What they don’t realize is that I’m not running,” Trump said, referring to the leadership in Tehran. “I did that already, and won in a landslide. We won in a giant landslide, and I’ll be here for 2-1/2 years.”

Taking aim at US neighbors, Trump labeled Mexico “the epicenter of cartel violence,” urged its government to “reclaim control of its soil,” ‌and said his ⁠administration was pursuing “a fundamental change in the situation in Cuba.”

Members of the Cuban delegation walked out of the hall as Trump referenced his pressure campaign against the country.

“It’s an absolutely failed state, it’s failing like never before, and it will fall,” said Trump.

Yet Trump’s appearance was less dramatic than in 2025, when he used a combative speech to chastise world leaders, warning that some countries were “going to hell,” and complained about UN facilities after being briefly stranded on a malfunctioning escalator and suffering an initial teleprompter failure, read the report.

Trump renewed his criticism of the UN, highlighting his efforts to cut its bureaucracy, but offered no fresh attacks or indications that the US would leave any additional UN agencies.

Trump spoke less than a week after a UN fact-finding mission said it had reasonable grounds to believe US forces committed war crimes in two strikes on Iran, including one ⁠that hit a primary school in the southern city of Minab.

He renewed his criticism of international bodies that could serve as a check on US power, singling out the International Criminal Court and declaring that US military personnel would not be subject to its authority.

“We will never allow US service members or anyone else to be investigated or given show trials by an anti-American tribunal with no jurisdiction over us,” he said.

Ahead of a UN Security Council meeting on AI and international security on Wednesday, Trump acknowledged the challenges of the new technology but said, “I’m ⁠not going to stifle growth of something that will be bigger than the Industrial Revolution.”

The speech kicked off a day of high-level diplomacy at the United Nations, where Trump was due to meet more than a dozen world leaders as wars in the Middle East and Ukraine continued to test his foreign policy agenda.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said he had “established a good connection” with Trump in their first-ever meeting, where they discussed trade, Ukraine and the status of the Falkland Islands. Trump called Burnham a “natural ⁠business person” after the meeting.

At the press-facing start of their talks, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said the meeting would demonstrate the strength of the US-Japan alliance amid a “severe security environment, including in Asia,” an apparent nod to China. Trump is due to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington later this week.

Trump lavished praise on Takaichi, calling her a friend and predicting she would “go down as one of the great prime ministers.”

On his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Trump told reporters that the two talked about finding a solution to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.