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By Editorial staff
Journalist
2 minute read
20 October 2026
06:00 am
A boy walks across the rubble of collapsed buildings in the Jabalia camp for Palestinian refugees in the northern Gaza Strip on October 19, 2026. The World Food Programme said on October 19 that it would end monthly assistance to 500 000 people in Gaza due to a funding shortfall, despite acute needs in the war-battered Palestinian territory. Picture: Bashar Taleb / AFP
When two-thirds of Gaza’s population are still “acutely food insecure” and “need humanitarian assistance to survive”, you understand how dire the situation is in that region.
When the food programme is going to cut monthly assistance to half-a-million people due to a funding shortfall, it paints a grim picture.
The World Food Programme (WFP) will still provide food or cash assistance each month for 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza – roughly half of the population – but in reduced amounts.
Food parcels will be cut from two per family to one and a smaller bag of wheat.
For the 75 000 families receiving cash assistance the amount will be cut from $400 (about R6 500) to $240 per month.
WFP country director Shaun Hughes said: “People are not safe. Air strikes continue on a daily basis. People continue to be displaced. Almost everybody remains without a permanent home to live in. And the humanitarian conditions are brutal.”
He added: “Rather than being able to sustain and scale up that assistance, we’re actually having to reduce it. And that’s not because we don’t have humanitarian access to deliver food; that’s because we don’t have funding.”
With winter looming the region’s needs will only multiply.
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