WFP Ukraine and Neighbouring Countries Situation Report #18, 25 May 2022
Highlights
In May, WFP assisted over 1.7 million displaced and conflict-affected people with food and cash thus far throughout Ukraine.
WFP cash assistance increased six-fold this month with around USD 68 million cash transfers provided to up to one million IDPs across Ukraine since the onset of the crisis.
WFP’s Ukraine emergency response faces a net funding shortfall of USD 319 million to sustain its operations through the month of August 2022.
Situation Update
Humanitarian needs continue to grow day by day in Ukraine, sparked by three months of ongoing conflict and mounting violence. Fighting remains focalized in eastern Ukraine, slowing in pace but prolonging in time. Sporadic and heightened tensions are taking place in the adjacent areas fuelling constant displacement throughout the country.
Needs are the most acute in contested and encircled areas suffering from massive destruction of civilian infrastructure, where humanitarian access and delivery of life-saving aid to stranded civilians is hampered by hostilities. Local capacities are overstretched in relatively peaceful areas hosting growing flows of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and suffering of shortages of services and commodities.
In this respect, Ukraine’s protracted conflict undermines the food security and wellbeing of many people inside the country in diverse ways as crops, livestock and agricultural infrastructure are destroyed and markets are disrupted, creating fear and uncertainty over fulfilling future needs.
Insecurity deprives civilians of access to food, water, medical care, fuel, and livelihoods. Normal food supply chains are interrupted from production and harvesting to processing and transport, preventing the movement of goods and people. The lack of fuel and disruption in commercial transportation, limit the farmers ability to deliver their produce to markets. Hence, people, unable to find improved livelihood prospects, resort to coping strategies to feed themselves.
The conflict is also exacerbating vulnerabilities to hunger for large segments of populations in protracted crises situations who have been wrestling with either crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity. It hinders humanitarian efforts to reach those in need and eradicate food insecurity and malnutrition worldwide, in an already challenged global food system.
The World Food Programme (WFP) calls for unconditional, unimpeded, and sustained access to all civilians in need in Ukraine. It also urges for swift action to establish peace and build people-centred and resilient food systems around the world, able to react and adapt to shocks.