It's a simple but brutal equation: The number of people going hungry or otherwise struggling around the world is rising, while the amount of money the world's wealthiest nations are contributing towards helping them is dropping.
The result: The United Nations says that, at best, it will be able to raise enough money to help about 60 per cent of the 307 million people it predicts will need humanitarian aid next year.
That means at least 117 million people won't get food or other assistance in 2025.
The UN also will end 2024 having raised about 46 per cent of the US$49.6 billion it sought for humanitarian aid across the globe, its data shows. It's the second year in a row the world body has raised less than half of what it sought.
The shortfall has forced humanitarian agencies to make agonising decisions, such as slashing rations for the hungry and cutting the number of people eligible for aid.
The consequences are being felt in places like Syria, where the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN's main food distributor, used to feed six million people.
Eyeing its projections for aid donations earlier this year, the WFP cut the number it hoped to help there to about one million people, said Rania Dagash-Kamara, the organisation's assistant executive director for partnerships and resource mobilisation.
Dagash-Kamara visited the WFP's Syria staff in March.
"Their line was, 'We are at this point taking from the hungry to feed the starving'," she said in an interview.
UN officials see few reasons for optimism at a time of widespread conflict, political unrest and extreme weather, all factors that stoke famine.
"We have been forced to scale back appeals to those in most dire need," Tom Fletcher, UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, told Reuters.
Financial pressures and shifting domestic politics are reshaping some wealthy nations' decisions about where and how much to give. One of the UN's largest donors — Germany — already shaved US$500 million in funding from 2023 to 2024 as part of general belt tightening.
The country's cabinet has recommended another US$1 billion reduction in humanitarian aid for 2025. A new parliament will decide next year's spending plan after the federal election in February.
Humanitarian organisations also are watching to see what United States President-elect Donald Trump proposes after he begins his second term in January. Trump has hired advisers who say there is room for cuts in foreign aid.
The US plays the leading role in preventing and combating starvation across the world. It provided US$64.5 billion in humanitarian aid over the last five years. That was at least 38 per cent of the total such contributions recorded by the UN.
The majority of humanitarian funding comes from just three wealthy donors: the US, Germany and the European Commission. They provided 58 per cent of the US$170 billion recorded by the UN in response to crises from 2020 to 2024.
Three other powers — China, Russia and India — collectively contributed less than one per cent of UN-tracked humanitarian funding over the same period, according to a review of UN contributions data.
Almost 282 million people in 59 countries and territories were facing high levels of acute food insecurity in 2023.
Jan Egeland was UN humanitarian chief from 2003 to 2006 and now heads the Norwegian Refugee Council, a non-governmental relief group.
Egeland said it was "crazy" that a tiny country like Norway was among the top funders of humanitarian aid.
With a 2023 gross national income (GNI) less than two per cent the size of America's, Norway ranked seventh among governments that gave to the UN that year more than US$1 billion, according to a Reuters review of UN aid data.
Two of the five biggest economies — China and India gave a tiny fraction. China ranked 32nd among governments in 2023, contributing US$11.5 million in humanitarian aid. It has the world's second-largest GNI.
India ranked 35th that year, with US$6.4 million in humanitarian aid. It has the fifth-largest GNI.
Aid tends to arrive "when the animals are dead, people are on the move and children are malnourished," said Julia Steets, director of the Global Public Policy Institute, a think tank based in Berlin.
The writers are from Reuters