The world is entering a “humanitarian doom loop” as Russia has not offered free grain to the United Nations (UN) food relief agency so far, an official says.

The deputy executive director of the World Food Programme (WFP), Carl Skau, said this at a press briefing on Friday at the UN headquarters in New York.

Mr Skau said the programme’s policy of buying supplies from Ukraine had been based on its competitive price and quality.

The WFP senior official said the Black Sea Grain Initiative collapse after Russia ended its engagement was “regrettable, to say the least.”

Under the initiative, WFP shipped more than 725,000 tons of grain, relieving hunger in some of the hardest-hit corners of the world, including Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and Yemen.

“WFP relied on Ukraine’s competitively priced, accessible and high-quality source of wheat,” Mr Skau said, adding, “In spite of the war and thanks to this accord, Ukraine remained WFP’s biggest supplier of wheat in 2022.”

“Losing this source now is of great concern, of course, as this is really about keeping the barn door open just when millions are knocking on it.

“The world needs unimpeded access to major food supplies.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly promised to supply free grain to six African nations at a summit held earlier in the week following the collapse of the initiative.

Responding to a question, Mr Skau said WFP had yet to be in talks with Russia about any free grain.

“We work in full cost recovery. So, we don’t service any country with in-kind. We have not been approached for any such discussion so far,” he added, noting that the UN agency buys grain where it is the cheapest and fastest to get to its beneficiaries.

Mr Skau went on to note that some of the countries where the needs are the greatest are also “where funding for relief operations are declining, forcing humanitarians to reduce or cut assistance”.

“In WFP’s case, we have to make impossible trade-offs of prioritising assistance,” he said.

In addition, he said the UN agency was in the midst of “a crippling funding crisis, which is forcing it to scale back life-saving assistance right as acute hunger is hitting record levels.”

At least 38 of WFP’s 86 country operations have experienced cuts or are planning to scale down food assistance programmes.

These include operations in Afghanistan, Syria, Palestine, Yemen, and several countries in West Africa.

He explained that due to these cuts, people at “crisis levels” of hunger would fall into “catastrophic levels”.

Around 345 million people are in an acute state of food insecurity. At the same time, hundreds of millions more are at risk of worsening hunger due to climate change impacts, natural disasters, food price increases, economic slowdowns, and conflict and insecurity.

(NAN)