Tag: displacement

Venezuela: Displacement & Food Needs

August 16, 2026     Venezuela has had the largest number of refugees fleeing from it, and now is a focus of humanitarian aid following the large June earthquakes that killed between 6,000 and 18,000 citizens.…

Prior to those earthquakes, the U.S. Famine Early Warning System projected some 1.8 million people in need of food assistance.  UNICEF (as U.N. Nutrition Cluster lead) reports that 11% of children under five nationwide are affected by wasting, but the burden is heavily skewed toward marginalized, indigenous, and remote communities where healthcare coverage is minimal and WASH conditions are critical. The cluster’s 2025 response covered 79 municipalities across 23 states.  The Wayuu and Afiú communities in Alta Guajira and the Sinamaica Lagoon face some of the most severe deprivations.  The Amazon and Delta regions also have high rates of malnutrition, particularly among the Yanomami indigenous community.
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The two large earthquakes that hit northern Venezuela on June 24, 2026 created immediate dislocations with an estimated 3.3 million persons in need of food assistance.  This represents the single largest, and by far the best-counted, displacement event in modern Venezuelan history.  Of those affected, 5,804 children and their caregivers have received nutrition services according to UNICEF.  Hardest hit were La Guaira, Caracas and Yaracuy.  An estimated 18,000 people remain homeless from these recent earthquakes. …
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Venezuela continues to have high inflation with low purchasing power for its citizens, which is one reason 7 and 8 million Venezuelans have fled the country to exile.   Six years ago Venezuela’s internally displaced people were in the west, on the Colombian border, and the international system was building out to reach them. Today the largest counted caseload sits at the opposite end of the country around the earthquake.  Around 2.8 million refugees still live in neighboring Colombia.
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The U.N. World Food Program has provided food to 120,000 people, including hot meals in shelters, ready-to-eat rations for displaced families, food baskets for households that can still cook, and prepaid electronic vouchers in areas where markets function.  The U.S. government has been one contributor, channeling support through WFP as part of a broader $386 million earthquake response package.
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Venezuela has been a crisis for many years because of an autocratic dictatorship. Recent regime change did not open space for anti-hunger aid groups. A state of exception decree, a still-paralyzed NGO registration regime, OHCHR still expelled, and  dozens of aggressive actions against aid actors have limited aid in the period since the earthquake.   Most of the constraints that made humanitarian work in Venezuela difficult in recent years were structural, e.g., the denial of a crisis, the NGO registration regime, hostility to independent monitoring, the security services’ instinct to control assistance. Removing the dictator Maduro did not resolve any of those. In recent weeks there have been dozens of documented incidents against humanitarian aid agencies, including closures of civilian aid collection points, three arbitrary detentions, eight press-freedom violations. Problems include:  Entry permits revoked for German and Austrian emergency medical teams; a Chilean rescue brigade accused of espionage; intelligence officers reported present inside shelters and at aid collection points.

One US nonprofit, International Medical Corps (IMC), has worked in Venezuela since 2019. Since then, the team has reached more than 3.7 million people in 10 states, supported more than 120 health centers, and distributed medications, medical supplies and equipment valued at nearly $2 million.  In addition to building up health systems, IMC manages acute malnutrition, conducts nutritional screening for early identification of acute malnutrition, and promotes infant and young-child feeding practices, integrated into health programming in remote areas of Bolívar and Delta Amacuro states, where referral services for conditions caused by acute malnutrition are otherwise unavailable. Immediately following the earthquakes on June 24, IMC’s in-country team mobilized emergency medical relief to the hard-hit region of La Guaira, including a field hospital, mobile medical units, water trucks and hygiene kits for displaced families.

Another nonprofit, Caritas Venezuela, is one of the country’s largest and most trusted humanitarian organizations, with a nationwide structure. Its broad diocesan and parish networks and permanent presence in communities across the country are why it is often among the first to respond when disaster strikes.  This extensive network enables U.S. Catholic Relief Services and Caritas to work closely with parish priests, lay leaders, health facilities, schools and community organizations to reach vulnerable families in informal urban settlements, remote rural areas and Indigenous territories where humanitarian coverage is often limited. With warehouses, transport authorization and a permanent presence even in hard-to-reach areas, Caritas Venezuela is deeply embedded in communities across the country.

Caritas is now shifting from immediate earthquake assistance toward recovery for those who lost everything, while continuing to maintain field operations, particularly in the coastal city of La Guaira, where the destruction is greatest.  Caritas Venezuela reports that it has received over 19,000 tons of aid and distributed approximately 16,000 tons. The scale of the volunteer mobilization is notable: around 10,000 people — teachers, young people, mothers, retirees and neighbors, joined volunteer efforts across all of Venezuela’s dioceses and parishes.

– Contributed by World Hunger Education Service Board member, Steven Hansch

 

Update about Hunger & War in Iran

July 26, 2026   By Stephen Sellers        What began as a single day of strikes on February 28, 2026 has become one of the longest and costliest U.S. military engagements in decades, and the humanitarian toll on Iran’s youngest children has deepened rather than resolved. Nearly five months on, the threat to child nutrition described in our initial briefing has moved from a fear we anticipated to documented reality, compounded by a currency collapse, a leadership crisis, and a war whose ceasefire has repeatedly failed to hold.

Hunger Notes reported large-scale population displacements in February.  Most of 3.2 million Iranians who were displaced have returned home.  A residual caseload of displaced remains from destroyed housing: 149,528 civilian units damaged (according to the Iranian Red Crescent, in June); ~400,000 people had homes directly affected. Only ~9,000 were still in tracked shelters in June.

Iran’s safety net appears to be effective at reaching vulnerable children, and preventing rates of wasting from increasing.  The Iranian Welfare Ministry food-basket program, Phase 34 (17–18 July 2026), which provides the most recent concrete figure, identifies 180,826 malnourished children aged 5–59 months who are enrolled for subsidized food baskets (152,788 in “very needy” households + 28,038 “moderate need”).

Malnutrition is worsening in the provinces Hunger Notes flagged as most vulnerable

Sistan-Baluchestan, which was named in our February briefing as an already-strained border province, remains the hardest hit by hunger.  Up to one-third of children under five in the province now face severe malnutrition. Many families subsist on little more than bread and tea, and the loss of free school meal programs has left some students too depleted to concentrate in class or attend at all. Nationally, child stunting continues to concentrate in Sistan-Baluchestan, Kerman, and Hormozgan, alongside a parallel crisis of; roughly 30% of pregnant women are failing to gain sufficient weight during pregnancy.

The war has not ended — it has cycled through ceasefires that collapsed

After more than five weeks of fighting, the United States and Iran agreed on April 7–8 to a ceasefire that also encompassed Israel.  U.S. President Trump extended it indefinitely on April 21, but both sides violated it almost immediately. A June memorandum of understanding sought to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and formally end the war within 60 days. Instead, fighting resumed in July after Iran struck three commercial vessels that had bypassed its pre-approved shipping route. By mid-July, the U.S. President had declared the ceasefire over following a new round of strikes after Tehran targeted vessels in the strait, and as of July 18 there was no sign the renewed fighting would end soon; a week of intensified strikes had left the ceasefire in tatters. Adding to the instability, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed and buried after marathon funeral ceremonies. His son and successor, Mojtaba, has not appeared publicly since taking over leadership.

Overall food production is up this year, or near average according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.  The Government is purchasing large amounts of wheat, but remains constrained in being able to pay farmers.  Iran has imported 22 Metric Tons of food, with Russia as the main source.

Iran’s food supply (production plus imports) has recovered  over the six months, while household food security has deteriorated sharply due to inflation and the collapsing value of the Iranian currency, the rial.

A collapsing currency has turned food into a luxury for many

The economic backdrop against which malnutrition is now unfolding is far worse than in February. Iran’s currency, the rial, approached 1.95 million to the dollar on July 20  down in value by roughly a third since January,with the IMF projecting nearly 69% average inflation and a contracting economy for 2026, leaving the official minimum wage worth only about $87 a month. Iran has not published GDP data since 2024, and a nationwide internet blackout has made even the country’s own statistics hard to verify from outside.

Food prices have increased 140% year-on-year, with flour up 170% and rice up 220%.  One dollar bought roughly 1,350,500 rials on January 1; by July 20 it bought nearly 1.9 million.  This means a  household purchasing-power collapse layered directly on top of the wartime disruption to food imports described in our original briefing.

The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is squeezing food and fertilizer supply chains region-wide

More than 90% of Iran’s annual trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz. The strait’s effective closure, combined with a subsequent U.S. blockade, has cut off up to 70% of Iran’s export revenue. The damage is not confined to Iran. Since the end of February, roughly 3.9 million tons of fertilizer exports, about 30% of the Gulf states’ annual fertilizer trade, have been suspended, and shortage risk keeps rising the longer the strait stays closed. The war continues to choke deliveries of fuel, fertilizer, medicine, and aid shipments transiting the Middle East, forcing the World Food Program and Save the Children to reroute aid around restricted waterways, adding weeks of delay and millions of dollars in cost.

The war’s humanitarian shockwaves have reached far beyond Iran’s borders

Perhaps the starkest change since February is how far the malnutrition impact has traveled. This past March, Hunger Notes projected that increases in fertilizer prices would result in reduced food production worldwide, and resulting hunger.

Save the Children, the nonprofit, projects that every $5 rise in oil prices tied to the conflict wipes out a month’s worth of life-saving humanitarian aid for nearly 40,000 children. . In Nigeria, children who had recovered from malnutrition are relapsing: hospital records in Sokoto show nearly 40 children previously treated since February back under treatment, with many more undocumented, as families lose income to war-driven fuel price increases. Hunger Notes,  UNICEF, Reuters, and the Financial Times have warned that a continued war will likely  push up to 23.4 million additional children worldwide into monetary poverty by year’s end.

What has changed, and what hasn’t

The core vulnerabilities identified in February include Iran’s large under-five population, pre-existing pockets of wasting and stunting concentrated in Sistan-Baluchestan and other border provinces, a food supply chain dependent on imports now vulnerable to blockade, and a government historically wary of Western humanitarian NGOs — have all held true and intensified. What has changed is the scale and duration: a war many observers once expected to last days or weeks instead approaches its fifth month with no durable ceasefire, a currency in freefall, a change in the country’s top leadership, and malnutrition effects now documented as far away as Nigeria and Somalia. Without a lasting cessation of hostilities and a functioning channel for food and medical imports, the compounding crisis facing Iran’s youngest children, and the children of countries dependent on the same shipping lanes and aid budgets, shows no sign of leveling off.

Humanitarian aid to Iran is relatively small.  Domestic organizations, such as the Iranian Red Crescent Society, provide most aid.  In April 2026, the ICRC delivered more than 170 tons of relief supplies, followed by another 18-ton shipment in June, UNICEF continues to provide child health, nutrition, vaccines and hygiene.

Further Reading:

FAO’s Global Information and Early Warning System

World Food Programme

 

 

Hunger in Haiti

April 28, 2026:   Over the last six years, the food crisis in Haiti has grown steadily worse.  In 2019–2020, around 3.7 million Haitians were in food insecurity (IPC) Phase 3 or above.  By 2022–2023, that was approaching 4.7 million, nearly half the population. The most recent UN Integrated Phase Classification system analysis shows 5.7 million people (more than half the population) facing high levels of acute food insecurity, with 1.9 million in IPC Phase 4 (Emergency).

What distinguishes Haiti from other countries is the degree to which hunger is caused by gangs.  Historically, gang violence in Haiti was largely concentrated in specific slums of Port-au-Prince. While devastating for those communities, the national food supply chain, which relies heavily on imports through the capital’s port, remained somewhat functional.  Between October 2024 and June 2025, gang violence expanded westward into the Artibonite and Centre Departments, where 92,000 and 147,000 people were displaced respectively. By early 2025, the violence had also expanded into previously untouched areas of the country, and gangs began expanding north, south and east toward the Dominican Republic border, with the apparent goal of controlling key roads used for illegal weapons trafficking.

Gangs directly affect Haiti’s food economy.   Haiti imports over 70% of its rice and wheat but gangs now control key maritime and overland routes , strangling the entire country’s supply chain.  The Port of Port-au-Prince is blocked, forcing rerouting to Cap-Haïtien, raising costs.

Agricultural output in the Artibonite is down by at least 48%, according to the technical coordinator at the Artibonite Valley Development Organization. Gangs have taken over irrigation canals that feed the valley, leaving fields barren. Agriculture has stopped entirely in areas like Petite Rivière, Verrettes, and Pont-Sondé, where fields lie fallow and are overrun by weeds.   Gangs control irrigation systems (e.g., in Liancourt, Verrettes), forcing farmers to pay “taxes” for water or share their harvest.  Major markets (e.g., Croix-des-Bossales) are >80% non-functional.

UN World Food Program analysis using European Space Agency satellite imagery found up to 3,000 hectares of Artibonite farmland abandoned in 2023 compared to 2018, and hunger in these areas jumped from 40% to 57% in a single year.

According to ACLED, instances of sociopolitical violence almost doubled in three years , from 455 events in 2020 to 874 in 2023. The number of violent events in January 2024 was more than 70% higher than January 2023, and more than 60% above the five-year average.  As a result, over 1.4 million people are displaced (double the number from just a year ago), overwhelming host communities.  More than 5,600 people were killed in 2024 alone. Between October 2024 and June 2025, another 4,864 people were killed.

The graph at right shows how the prevalence of child malnutrition has increased over recent years.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) reports that 75% of households cannot afford health services, and nearly 50% of the population survives on less than $3 a day.

In this 2026 cycle, UNICEF has targeted over 129,000 children (aged 6–59 months) for treatment of Severe Acute Malnutrition.  UNICEF’s estimate of the increase in the number of cases of severe malnutrition is shown in the graph below.

Aid agencies have been continuously trying to provide life-saving assistance.  NGOs such as CARE, Catholic Relief Services and World Vision have led large consortia to promote nutrition in Haiti for decades, though the ability of outside agencies to operate has become constrained.  Today, agencies responding include:

  • -Action Against Hunger US is involved in Haiti. They support populations affected by violence and displacement, delivering critical food assistance and cash support in the Nord-Ouest region. In Nord-Est and Sud, their focus is on preventing malnutrition through targeted interventions. In Port-au-Prince, they provide vocational training, treat children suffering from malnutrition, and offer primary healthcare services to over 30,000 people.
  • -Catholic Relief Services (CRS) provides food assistance.
  • -CARE provides food to displaced populations.
  • -Compassion International provides food and voucher support through 365 church partners, helping children and caregivers.
  • -GOAL is providing cash for food security.
  • -Malteser International supports food security and nutrition, working with community health centers to identify and support malnourished children, pregnant women, and breastfeeding mothers.
  • -Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF/Doctors Without Borders) provides mobile and maternity clinics.
  • -Partners In Health (PIH/Zanmi Lasante): PIH deploys mobile food clinics staffed with medical professionals and community health workers to sites in the Artibonite region. They seek to identify malnourished children early so treatment can be delivered before health problems become fatal
  • -World Vision. World Vision is active in Haiti with child-focused hunger work, including school meals and other food support. Recent World Vision materials also describe food packages and support tied to the hunger crisis in Haiti.
  • -Meds & Food for Kids (MFK). This is a particularly important nutrition-focused Haiti organization. MFK produces therapeutic and supplemental foods in Haiti and works with Haitian clinics to treat malnourished infants and toddlers; it also runs school-feeding support with Vita Mamba.

-Reported by Steven Hansch, for Hunger Notes

Lebanon’s 2026 Conflict and Displacement Increase Malnutrition

April 8, 2026:    An estimated 1.65 million people in Lebanon are vulnerable to increased food shortages and malnutrition due to the combination of conflict, bombardment, displacement and denied access of food shipments. The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon has caused significant agricultural damage, estimated at $704 million, and disrupted livelihoods, especially for small-scale farmers.  However, aid agencies have not reported new rates of malnutrition from population-based surveys.

Pre-conflict, children in Lebanon were found to be 36% anemic from iron deficiency, with reduced dietary diversity and high rates of zinc and Vitamin A deficiency.

Daily military strikes and incursions continue, particularly in the south of Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, preventing people from returning home and resuming their livelihood.  People are sheltering in schools, public spaces, and even their cars, with many shelters already overcrowded. Hotspots include Baalbek, El Hermel, Akkar, Bent Jbeil, Marjaayoun, El Nabatieh, and Sour.  Seven bridges across the Litani River — a key transport corridor linking southern areas to the rest of the country — were struck as of late March 2026, disrupting supply routes for food, fuel, and medical goods.   Retail activity collapsed in conflict zones: only 15% of shops in El-Nabatieh and one-third in South Lebanon remained fully operational.   Markets south of the Litani River largely ceased operations, with many shops closed or evacuated and supply deliveries significantly reduced

More generally, Lebanese also have seen increases in the price of food, which has been affected by the regional conflict and constraints on fuel.  For example, the price of bread increased 8% at subsidized rates but 30% at many bakeries.  The Ministry of Economy increased the price of bread  by 5,000 Lebanese pounds due to rising fuel costs affecting oven operations and flour transportation.

International Aid

As needs have increased, the funding for aid has decreased. Food assistance coverage has dropped by about 45% between 2024 and 2025, forcing the WFP to reduce the number of people it assists by 40%.

Aid agencies that are responding with nutrition, food and health assistance include the Mennonite Central Committee, the Lebanese Red Cross, Action Against Hunger (AAH and ACF), the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, UNICEF, CARE, Caritas, MedAir, and others.

A new digital platform called Sofra is coordinating an innovative response by connecting international donors with local restaurants to prepare and deliver meals to verified shelters. This initiative helps feed displaced families while supporting local businesses and keeping restaurant staff employed.