US aid cuts force Unicef to scale back Lebanon nutrition programs, official says

US aid cuts have forced the UN children’s agency Unicef to suspend or scale back many programs in Lebanon where more than half of children under the age of two experiencing severe food poverty in the country’s east, an official said.

“We have been forced to suspend or cut back or drastically reduce many of our programs and that includes nutrition programs,” Unicef’s deputy representative in Lebanon, Ettie Higgins, told reporters in Geneva via video link from Beirut.

In the last two years the number of children facing food shortages in the eastern Bekaa and Baalbek regions of the country has doubled, according to a Unicef report that studied the impact of cross-border clashes between Hezbollah and Israel since 8 October 2023, a day after the start of the war on Gaza.

"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.