The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is warning that the United States' and Israel's war on Iran and the regional spillover across the Middle East could push global hunger to record levels. The ongoing conflict could cause the greatest disruption to lifesaving humanitarian work since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, WFP said on Tuesday.
“Beyond the immediate fallout in Lebanon, the conflict has also caused major knock-on effects on global humanitarian operations; we are really feeling the pain on this,” WFP Deputy Executive Director Carl Skau told reporters in Geneva.
“Our supply chains may really be on the brink of the most severe disruption since COVID and the Ukraine war back in 2022.”
Skau said relief operations are suffering from longer shipping times and increased costs as the escalating violence in the Middle East continues into its third week, sparked by Israeli and US strikes on Iran and retaliatory attacks by Tehran and allied groups.
Amid ongoing hostilities – including Iranian counterstrikes against Gulf states and Israeli attacks on targets in Lebanon – WFP’s shipping costs “are up 18 percent so far and we have thousands of trucks on the roads every day,” Skau explained.
“These are now running on much more expensive fuel, due to the oil prices.”
He deplored the impact of higher costs which “mean that we can buy less food or provide less cash to beneficiaries”.
The UN agency has been forced to cut food rations for people in famine conditions in Sudan and is only able to support one in four acutely malnourished children in Afghanistan – currently the world's worst malnutrition crisis.
Another major concern is related to the disruption of global fertilizer markets “just as sub-Saharan Africa heads into a planting season”, Skau said.
A quarter of the world’s fertilizer supply comes through the Strait of Hormuz, “which is now at a virtual standstill”, he explained.
On Monday, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) had released a report noting that the conflict has generated a major shock to global energy, fertilizer, and agrifood systems.
New analysis by WFP estimates that nearly 45 million more people could fall into acute hunger. That number would add to the 318 million people around the world who are already food insecure.
Skau stressed that the spike in global food and fuel costs “could leave millions of families priced out of staple foods, particularly in import-dependent countries, like sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.”
“If the Middle East conflict continues through June, an additional 45 million people could be pushed into acute hunger by price rises,” he warned.
“This would take global hunger levels to an all-time record and it's a terrible, terrible prospect.”
Meanwhile, the humanitarian effects of air traffic disruption continue to be felt acutely in Lebanon, one of the epicenters of the conflict, the UN’s top aid official in the country, Imran Riza, told reporters in Geneva.
“In 2024 [during the previous Israel-Lebanon conflict] we were receiving an incredible amount of assistance from the Gulf states, from the Saudis, from Qatar, from the UAE, from Oman, from Bahrain […]. We were getting a lot from Kuwait, and none of that is happening,” he said.
“The air bridge is no longer there.”
Lebanon: An epicenter of the conflict
Since March 2, at least 886 people, including 111 children, have been killed, according to Lebanese authorities. Israeli airstrikes have destroyed hundreds of homes and civilian infrastructure, including healthcare facilities. Meanwhile, Hezbollah fighters have launched barrages of rockets at Israel, injuring people and damaging residential buildings and other civilian infrastructure.
Displacement and humanitarian needs have surged across Lebanon as a result of Israeli airstrikes and displacement orders covering ever larger portions of the small Middle Eastern nation’s territory.
Riza said that while some 132,700 people are currently staying in 622 shelters, the estimated total number of people who have fled their homes is much higher — over one million.
“If you think that the population of Lebanon, citizens as well as refugees […], is close to about five and a half million, [we’re] talking about almost 20 percent of the people living in Lebanon having been displaced - and it's going to continue,” he said.
Evacuation orders or forced displacement orders have been issued for southern Lebanon, the southern suburbs of Beirut, and parts of the Bekaa region.
About 70 percent of the displaced are not in shelters, Riza said, which creates challenges for humanitarians trying to reach them. He also explained that because of military operations it has become very difficult to access people refusing to leave their villages.
Riza spoke in particular of the elderly, “people who can't physically move and are very scared to leave”.
“They’re very vulnerable people that are remaining behind - and there are others that want don't want to risk losing their homes, their villages.”
“Deliberately attacking civilians or civilian objects amounts to a war crime. In addition, international law provides for specific protections for healthcare workers as well as people at heightened risk, such as the elderly, women, and displaced people,” said Thameen Al-Kheetan, spokesperson for the UN human rights office (OHCHR).
Recalling that Israel has extended its warning and displacement orders across southern Lebanon, “adding the region between the Litani and the Zahrani rivers to the broad swathes of Lebanese territory already covered,” he warned that these orders “may amount to forced displacement”, which is prohibited under International Humanitarian Law.
Al-Kheetan stressed that in many instances, Israeli airstrikes “have destroyed entire residential buildings in dense urban environments, with multiple members of the same family, including women and children, often killed together”.
The UN human rights spokesperson added that people displaced by the fighting and living in tents along Beirut's seafront have been hit by airstrikes, while at least 16 medical staff have been killed in recent days.
“Statements by Israeli officials threatening to impose the same level of destruction on Lebanon as inflicted in Gaza are wholly unacceptable,” Al-Kheetan stressed.
“Such rhetoric, coupled with the Israeli military's announcement that it would deploy additional forces and expand its ground incursion, intensify deep fear and anxiety among the Lebanese population,” he said.
Deteriorating humanitarian situation inside Iran
On Monday at the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) in Geneva, speakers emphasized the mounting civilian casualties in the Middle East caused by Israeli and U.S. bombings of Iran, Tehran's retaliatory strikes against Gulf states, and Israeli airstrikes and shelling in Lebanon initially sparked by attacks from the Hezbollah militant group.
“On February 28, the U.S. and Israel launched a devastating aerial campaign against Iran, ostensibly targeting military sites and nuclear facilities. In almost three weeks, these strikes have resulted in mounting reports of civilian casualties, including children,” Sara Hossein, chair of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran, told the HRC.
While presenting the Mission’s latest report, Hossein addressed the ongoing plight of ordinary Iranians, who are “caught between a large-scale military campaign by two countries, the US and Israel, and ongoing repression by their own government in Iran”.
Residential areas, multiple oil depots, and a desalination plant have been "struck, damaged, and destroyed," causing "severe harm" to civilians, the independent rights expert said. Like all those appointed by the Council, she is not a UN staff member nor is she paid for her work.
Hossein also noted ho airstrikes had destroyed a school in Minab in southern Iran on the first day of the war, killing more than 168 people, “the vast majority of them being girl students, many as young as seven years old”, she said, while expressing concern at “public statements from US officials suggesting that long-established ‘rules of engagement’ do not apply in this conflict”.
Rules of engagement are designed to minimize harm to civilians by adhering to the principles of International Humanitarian Law (IHL). According to IHL, intentionally targeting civilians as well as civilian objects such as hospitals, schools, and places of worship, is a war crime.
Likewise, launching an attack with knowledge that it will cause excessive incidental civilian loss in relation to the anticipated direct military advantage is a war crime. Failure to take feasible precautions or disregard for the risk of excessive civilian harm may also constitute a war crime.
Since February 28, US-Israeli attacks on Iran have killed at least 1,444 people, most of whom were civilians, and injured more than 18,500, according to Iranian health officials.
In addition to the Minab school strike, Mai Sato, the HRC’s Special Rapporteur on Iran, said that 1,000 civilians had reportedly been killed and that hospitals and World Heritage sites had been destroyed.
“Strikes on oil infrastructure have caused toxic environmental consequences […] in a country that was already experiencing acute water shortages,” she added.
Echoing widespread concerns about the deteriorating humanitarian crisis inside Iran since the outbreak of war, Sato pointed out that three million people are now displaced within Iran. She added that the absence of functional air raid sirens and bomb shelters in many urban areas adds to concerns about basic civilian protection during hostilities.
According to the Iranian Red Crescent Society, more than 54,000 civilian structures have been damaged, including residential and commercial buildings, as well as schools. Iranian organizations have also reported extensive damage to health infrastructure and resources for emergency response, with over 230 health facilities reportedly damaged or destroyed.