UN Says Middle East War is Causing Major Disruptions to Aid Distribution

The World Food Programme said deliveries of desperately-need food for aid operations around the world were facing long delays and increasing costs.

"For us, it's the most significant disruption of supply chains that we have seen since Covid and the beginning of the war in Ukraine," Corinne Fleischer, WFP's supply chain chief, told reporters in Geneva, speaking via video link from Rome.

She said the UN agency currently had 70,000 metric tonnes of food impacted by the war in the West Asia.

Around half of that was on chartered bulk vessels, while the other half was in containers that were "either en route or stuck in ports and don't move", she said.

The effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran, through which a fifth of the world's oil and gas normally passes, has caused shortages in many countries.

WFP does not ship cargo directly through the Strait of Hormuz, but Fleischer warned the agency was "impacted by the ripple effects of what's happening there".

"This is a whole disruption of the global supply chain," she said, pointing to vessels stuck in ports, not berthing properly, not leaving ports, or with containers not being offloaded.

And the disruptions are unlikely to be short-lived.

"What we've seen after COVID is that it took four to five months to get back into place once the situation stabilised," she pointed out.

WFP was also being hit by carriers avoiding the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, Fleischer said.

The rerouting of vessels through the Horn of Africa and the Cape of Good Hope into Eastern Africa adds about 25 to 30 days of shipping time, which in turn translates to a 15-25-percent hike in rates, she said.

Conflict is also forcing WFP to create complex new routes to bring food into Afghanistan, where 17 million people are food insecure.

Fleischer said conflict with neighbouring Pakistan had first pushed WFP to reroute cargo through Iran.

But then the West Asia war broke out, and cargo that was already en route was diverted to Dubai, and will now be trucked through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan before finally reaching Afghanistan, she said.

"This adds about 1,000 euros per tonne and another three weeks," Fleischer explained.

In some countries, the effects of the crisis are already being felt in local transport costs, with prices surging 45 percent in Lebanon, and tripling in Afghanistan, WFP said.

The agency warned of the heavy impact on vulnerable populations.

"The people we are concerned about are not those who go to fuel stations to fill up their cars. They are people who already spend between 50 and 70 percent of their income on food," Fleischer said.

There are already some 318 million people worldwide considered acutely food insecure, and the WFP warns an additional 45 million people could join their ranks if the West Asia war rages on beyond June.