By Olivia Le Poidevin
GENEVA (Reuters) – U.S. aid cuts have forced the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF to suspend or scale back many programmes in Lebanon, with more than half of children under the age of two experiencing severe food poverty in the country’s east, a UNICEF official said on Friday.
“We have been forced to suspend or cut back or drastically reduce many of our programmes and that includes nutrition programmes,” UNICEF’s deputy representative in Lebanon, Ettie Higgins, told reporters in Geneva via video link from Beirut.
More than double the number of children faced food shortages in the eastern Bekaa and Baalbek regions of the country compared to two years ago, according to a UNICEF report that studied the impact of 14 months of hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel that began in October 2023.
“The assessment revealed a grim picture of children’s nutrition situation, particularly in the Baalbeck and Bekaa governorates, which remained densely populated when they were repeatedly targeted by air strikes”, said Higgins.
Nearly 80% of families were in need of urgent support and 31 per cent of households did not have enough drinking water, putting them at risk of disease, the report found.
UNICEF raised alarm about the impact of U.S. aid cuts and a broader decline in global humanitarian funding.
“More than half a million children and their families (in Lebanon) risk losing critical cash support from U.N. agencies this month. These cuts would strip the most vulnerable of their last lifeline, leaving them unable to afford even the most basic necessities”, Higgins added.
Only 26% of UNICEF’s 2025 Lebanon appeal is funded.
A ceasefire ended the conflict in Lebanon in November, which began when Hezbollah opened fire on Israel on October 8, 2023 in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas. Some 3,800 people were killed and more than a million people were displaced by Israeli air strikes in Lebanon, while tens of thousands of Israelis were displaced in northern Israel.
President Donald Trump ordered a 90-day pause on all foreign aid in January to carry out a review to ensure all the projects were aligned with his “America First” policy. On Wednesday his administration said it was cutting more than 90% of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s aid contracts.
(Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin, editing by Rachel More, William Maclean)
