Cindy McCain, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, expressed appreciation for Japan\u2019s continued contributions during her visit to the country this week as the organization struggles with financial difficulties.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re facing a 20% higher (transportation) charge for what we need,\u201d such as food and other relief supplies, since the Strait of Hormuz has effectively been closed due to the military conflict between the United States and Iran, McCain said in an interview in Tokyo on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
As the WFP has been forced to scale back its activities due to budget constraints, McCain said that \u201clives are at stake,\u201d calling for the reopening of the key transport waterway.<\/p>\n
McCain said that the WFP would have to cut back on the number of people it can feed due to soaring fuel costs for transporting relief supplies.<\/p>\n
She added that the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz has forced ships carrying food aid to take detours, causing delays in deliveries.<\/p>\n
Currently, the United Nations is experiencing a funding shortfall as U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s administration has drastically cut foreign aid.<\/p>\n
As more countries increase defense spending by cutting funding for humanitarian aid amid growing instability in the international situation, contributions to the WFP fell to about $6.4 billion (about \u00a51 trillion) in 2025 from about $9.75 billion in 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so grateful to the Japanese because they\u2019ve maintained their interests, their level of support,\u201d McCain said.<\/p>\n
McCain has served as the WFP\u2019s executive director since April 2023. She will step down at the end of this month for health reasons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cindy McCain, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, expressed appreciation for Japan\u2019s continued contributions during her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5706,21215,1162,8,449,33,9355,14318],"class_list":["post-26751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-aid","tag-cindy-mccain","tag-food","tag-japan","tag-middle-east","tag-nihon","tag-u-n","tag-wfp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}