Food insecurity worsened around the world in 2023, with about 282 million people suffering from acute hunger due to conflicts, particularly in Gaza and Sudan, according to United Nations agencies and development groups.
Extreme weather events and economic shocks added to the number of those facing acute food insecurity, which grew by 24 million people compared with 2022, according to a global report on food crises from the Food Security Information Network (FSIN) published on Wednesday.
The report, which called the global outlook “bleak” for this year, is produced for an international alliance bringing together UN agencies, the European Union and governmental and non-governmental bodies.
The year 2023 was the fifth consecutive one with a rising number of people suffering acute food insecurity – defined as when populations face food deprivation that threatens lives or livelihoods, regardless of the causes or length of time.
Much of last year’s increase was due to the report’s expanded geographic coverage and deteriorating conditions in 12 countries.
More geographical areas experienced “new or intensified shocks” while there was a “marked deterioration in key food crisis contexts such as Sudan and the Gaza Strip”, Fleur Wouterse, deputy director of the emergencies office within the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), told the AFP news agency.
Brink of starvation in Gaza
About 700,000 people, including 600,000 in Gaza, were on the brink of starvation last year, a figure that has since climbed yet higher to 1.1 million in the war-ridden Palestinian territory.
Since the first report by the Global Network Against Food Crises covering 2016, the number of food-insecure people has risen from 108 million to 282 million, Wouterse said.
Meanwhile, the share of the population affected within the areas concerned has doubled from 11 percent to 22 percent, she added.
Volunteers deliver food to families in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip [File: Mahmoud Issa/Reuters]
Protracted major food crises are ongoing in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Syria and Yemen.
“In a world of plenty, children are starving to death,” wrote UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in the report’s foreword.
“War, climate chaos and a cost-of-living crisis – combined with inadequate action – mean that almost 300 million people faced acute food crisis in 2023,” he said, adding that “funding is not keeping pace with need”.
Call for end of hostilities
For 2024, progress will depend on the end of hostilities, said Wouterse, who stressed that aid could “rapidly” alleviate the crisis in Gaza or Sudan, for example, once humanitarian access to the areas is possible.
Worsening conditions in Haiti were due to political instability and reduced agricultural production, “where in the breadbasket of the Artibonite Valley, armed groups have seized agricultural land and stolen crops”, Wouterse said.
Lorena Jean Denise feeds her 19-month-old son David, one of several malnourished infants and toddlers who are being treated at the Centre Hospitalier de Fontaine, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti [File: Octavio Jones/Reuters]
The El Nino weather phenomenon could also lead to severe drought in West and Southern Africa, she added.
According to the report, situations of conflict or insecurity have become the main cause of acute hunger in 20 countries or territories, where 135 million people have suffered.
Extreme climatic events such as floods or droughts were the main cause of acute food insecurity for 72 million people in 18 countries, while economic shocks pushed 75 million people into this situation in 21 countries.
“Decreasing global food prices did not transmit to low-income, import-dependent countries,” said the report.
At the same time, high debt levels “limited government options to mitigate the effects of high prices”.
The situation improved in 2023 in 17 countries, including the DR Congo and Ukraine, the report found.
UN agencies say double-digit inflation and stagnating local production are major drivers of the hunger crisis.
Nearly 55 million people will struggle to feed themselves in the coming months in West and Central Africa as soaring prices have fuelled a food crisis, United Nations agencies have warned.
In a joint statement on Friday, the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN children’s agency UNICEF, and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said that the number facing hunger during the June-August lean season had quadrupled over the last five years.
It said economic challenges such as double-digit inflation and stagnating local production had become major drivers of the crisis, beyond recurrent conflicts in the region.
And it noted that Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Mali would be among the worst affected.
The UN agencies said the prices of major staple grains had continued to rise across the region from 10 percent to more than 100 percent compared with the five-year average.
The situation was particularly worrying in northern Mali, where some 2,600 people are likely to experience catastrophic hunger, it added.
“The time to act is now. We need all partners to step up … to prevent the situation from getting out of control,” said Margot Vandervelden, WFP’s acting regional director for West Africa.
“We need to invest more in resilience-building and longer-term solutions for the future of West Africa,” she added.
Malnourished children
Food shortages have also resulted in “alarmingly high” levels of malnutrition, with children badly affected.
The agencies said eight out of 10 children aged between six and 23 months do not consume the minimum amount of food required for optimal growth and development.
It also said some 16.7 million children under the age of five are acutely malnourished and more than two out of three households are unable to afford healthy diets.
“For children in the region to reach their full potential, we need to ensure that each girl and boy receives good nutrition and care, lives in a healthy and safe environment, and is given the right learning opportunities,” said UNICEF Regional Director Gilles Fagninou.
“To make a lasting difference in children’s lives, we need to consider the situation of the child as a whole and strengthen education, health, water and sanitation, food, and social protection systems,” he added.
The region’s heavy dependence on food imports has tightened the squeeze, particularly for countries battling high inflation such as Ghana, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone.
Policies should be introduced to boost and diversify local food production “to respond to the unprecedented food and nutrition insecurity”, said Robert Guei, the FAO’s Sub-regional Coordinator for West Africa.
Israel says it will send a delegation to Qatar for more talks with mediators after Hamas presented a new truce proposal.
The main United Nations aid agency operating in Gaza has said that acute malnutrition was accelerating in the north of the Palestinian enclave as Israel prepared to send a delegation to Qatar for new truce talks on a hostage deal with Hamas.
On Saturday, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said one in three children under the age of two in northern Gaza are now acutely malnourished, putting more pressure on Israel over the looming famine.
“Children’s malnutrition is spreading fast and reaching unprecedented levels in Gaza,” UNRWA said in a social media post.
On Friday, Israel said it would send a delegation to Qatar for more talks with mediators after Hamas presented a new proposal for a ceasefire with an exchange of hostages and prisoners.
A source familiar with the talks told the Reuters news agency that the delegation will be led by the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, David Barnea. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking to convene the security cabinet to discuss the proposal before the talks start.
Netanyahu’s office has said the Hamas offer was still based on “unrealistic demands”.
Repeated efforts failed to secure a ceasefire before the holy month of Ramadan, which started a week ago, with Israel saying it plans to launch a new offensive in Rafah in southern Gaza.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, starting a two-day visit to the region, voiced concerns about an assault on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are sheltering, saying there was a danger it would result “in many terrible civilian casualties”.
On Friday, Netanyahu’s office said he had approved an attack plan on Rafah and that the civilian population would be evacuated.
It gave no timeframe, and there was no immediate evidence of extra preparations on the ground.
Humanitarian crisis
Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed at least 31,553 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in the strip.
The assault has also devastated the enclave, forcing nearly all the inhabitants from their homes, leaving much of the territory in rubble and triggering a massive hunger crisis.
“Children’s malnutrition is spreading fast and reaching unprecedented levels in Gaza,” UNRWA said in a social media post. Hospitals in Gaza have reported some children dying of malnutrition and dehydration.
Western countries have called on Israel to do more to allow in aid, with the UN saying it faced “overwhelming obstacles” including crossing closures, onerous vetting, restrictions on movement and unrest inside Gaza.
A first delivery into Gaza by the World Central Kitchen, pioneering a new sea route via Cyprus, arrived on Friday and was off-loaded, the charity said.
Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides said a second cargo of food aid was ready to depart by sea from Cyprus on Saturday, while the United States and Jordan said they carried out an airdrop of humanitarian aid.
In a CNN interview, Queen Rania of Jordan called the airdrops “literally just drops in the ocean of unmet needs” and accused Israel of “cutting off everything that is required to sustain a human life: food, fuel, medicine, water”.
Humanitarian aid for Gaza is loaded on a cargo ship in the port of Larnaca, Cyprus [Yiannis Kourtoglou/Reuters]
Rafah, Gaza Strip – The rooms and corridors of Rafah’s Al-Amal Rehabilitation Society, a two-storey building in a sunny yard filled with trees, and a children’s play area off to the side, are as lively as they have ever been.
But instead of it being just the deaf students who are usually bustling around, the classrooms are occupied by families fleeing Israel’s relentless assault on the people of Gaza.
Rafah, at the southernmost tip of the Gaza Strip on the border with Egypt, now hosts some 1.5 million people displaced by the endless, indiscriminate Israeli bombing from other parts of the Gaza Strip into an area of about 63sq km (24sq miles).
The first arrivals poured into the fixed structures: homes of friends or family, abandoned buildings, and schools that were not in use because Israel’s war on Gaza had paralysed life.
Some of the schools were run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) but the agency is no longer able to fully operate them as shelters as it did several times before during previous Israeli assaults on Gaza.
Rafah is estimated to have about 15 buildings that can be used as shelters, each of which can house about 3,000 people. This makes for a total of 45,000 displaced people that the city can cope with. Today, each school building is home to up to 25,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs).
The Society’s building and grounds are straining to accommodate displaced people[Courtesy Al-Amal Society]
The unprecedented influx of people prompted the independent Al-Amal Society management to open its doors to IDPs, seeing the dire need as families came to Rafah on foot, carrying, pushing, or pulling those who could not walk, holding on to whatever meagre possessions they could save.
Families like that of journalist Abdul Rahman Mahani, 24, who all live in a single room. He was displaced along with his parents, brother and two sisters, but this was not their first displacement.
They had fled the vicious bombing on their neighbourhood of Remal in the west of Gaza City to the doomed al-Shifa Hospital and finally down to Rafah.
“In the dark of night, we heard the frantic voices of neighbours yelling: ‘Evacuate! Evacuate!’” Mahani told Al Jazeera of a night when he and his family fled. “Amid the Israeli raids, we all rushed to seek refuge at al-Shifa Hospital.”
From al-Shifa they soon had to relocate, to the Nassr neighbourhood this time, and Mahani remembers making the trek with a 25kg (about 50 pounds) bag of flour on his back, a most precious commodity in Gaza.
There was no safety to be found anywhere, and after several days of moving back and forth between Nassr, al-Shifa and the area around it, the family made its way south to Khan Younis.
Abdul Rahman Mahani came to Al-Amal after several displacements [Courtesy Abdulrahman Mehanne]
“That was the first time I saw Israeli occupation tanks, from a distance. We were walking in lines … young Palestinians were being arrested right before our eyes … it was terrifying.”
A month later, another move, then another which finally brought them to Al-Amal Society, although there is no guarantee that this would be the last time they have to pick up their lives and go.
Al-Amal, ‘hope’
The deaf children and youth who attend Al-Amal Society’s school are all from Rafah, so some were able to stay in their homes, if the homes were in one piece.
Some children had to move into the building with their families after their home was destroyed by Israeli attacks. They have hit the ground running though, acting as guides for incoming families, showing them where markets, shops, pharmacies and healthcare facilities are.
The team at Al-Amal, comprising five people including project manager Bahaa Abu Batnin, are happy to have this extra help. “The deaf students are so cheerful and they love to give.
“They found ways to communicate with the displaced, making the displaced feel like they’re at home despite the Israeli bombing and the difficulties and hardships,” Abu Batnin told Al Jazeera.
Palestinian children wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen amid shortages of food supplies, in Rafah on March 5, 2024 [Mohammed Salem/Reuters]
They have also drafted some displaced people to volunteer to clean or cook for the others and run recreational activities for the children.
There are now more than 600 people living at Al-Amal, some rooms crammed with more than 20 people, and the team works hard every day to try to help as many of them as possible.
Funding is an issue as they have to rely on financial or in-kind donations to support everybody, but they have resorted to solutions like bringing items in from their own homes, especially when they were scrambling for enough mattresses and blankets for all the IDPs in Gaza’s cold winter weather.
Struggling for the basics
Once those had been secured, they had to turn to other priorities, with which they also struggled.
With regards to food, the team is only able to provide enough to give each displaced person just one small meal a day.
In addition to that, the Gaza-wide potable water crisis means they can only secure the equivalent of five cups of water a week per person.
Another priority the team works hard to provide is the “dignity bags” of sanitary pads, painkillers and other supplies that they offer to all the displaced women and girls.
Baha al-Batnin [Courtesy of Baha al-Batnin]
To a certain extent, helping displaced people has become a personal mission for Abu Batnin and the team, and they do not want to give up on any aspect.
“We primarily care for displaced children and women, so our priorities were decided accordingly,” Abu Batnin said.
Hala, a mother of three, is grateful that the dignity bags made it onto the priority list.
“They’re so necessary, we can’t find these things in the markets at all right now,” she told Al Jazeera.
Hala, her husband and their two sons and daughter were displaced from Tal al-Hawa, west of Gaza City, on October 13. Initially, they sought refuge in their second home in az-Zahra for about five days but the Israeli bombs got there too.
They managed to get one room in Al-Amal, which is better than nothing, despite the discomfort of being crammed in a tiny room and having to share one bathroom with five other families.
But, she says: “I don’t feel safe. The constant sounds of Israeli bombings just increase the sense of danger.”
Five people were killed and several injured after a parachute landing a humanitarian airdrop failed to open, bringing a pallet crashing down into a crowd of people waiting for food north of Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp.
The government media office in Gaza confirmed the casualties after the incident occurred on Friday, lambasting the “useless” airdrops as “flashy propaganda rather than a humanitarian service” and calling for food to be allowed through land crossings.
“We previously warned it poses a threat to the lives of citizens in the Gaza Strip and this is what happened today when the parcels fell on the citizens’ heads,” it said in a statement.
Reporting from Rafah, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said that people are experiencing “a tragedy” in the north of Gaza.
“Not only are they confronted with the lack of food and medical supplies, but as they wait for packages of food, they are either targeted by the Israeli military or killed by a non-functional parachute,” Mahmoud said.
The deaths occurred as famine stalked the enclave, with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reporting last month that at least half a million, or one in four people in Gaza, face famine.
It highlighted the problem of getting desperately needed humanitarian relief into Gaza amid Israeli restrictions.
UNRWA, the largest UN agency in Gaza, says Israeli authorities have not allowed it to deliver supplies to the north of the strip since January 23.
Palestinian children wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen in Rafah [File: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters]
The World Food Programme, which had paused deliveries in Gaza because of security concerns, said the military forced its first convoy to the north in two weeks to turn back on Tuesday.
In response, a number of countries – including the United States, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt – have conducted airdrops, which have been criticised by aid agencies as a costly and ineffective way of delivering food and medical supplies.
On Wednesday, the WFP said that the controversial method should be considered “a last resort”. By way of contrast, it said that the week’s airdrops had only delivered six tonnes of food, while a failed 14-truck convoy would have brought 200 tonnes of food to people.
#Airdrops are only a last resort to reach Northern Gaza. Road routes are the only way to bring in the large quantities of food desperately needed to avert #famine.
For comparison:
🪂 This week’s airdrops = 6 tons of food 🚛This week’s failed 14-truck convoy = 200 tons of food pic.twitter.com/xkR3ZfDgmt
— WFP in the Middle East & North Africa (@WFP_MENA) March 6, 2024
On Friday, Juliette Touma, UNRWA’s communications director told Al Jazeera, “There is an easier and cheaper way to bring in much-needed supplies into the Gaza Strip … That is via the road including sending more trucks from Israel into the Gaza Strip.
“When there is a political will there is a way,” she said, adding that, so far, desperately needed supplies have not been cleared fast enough and “there needs to be much more” going into the strip.
Friday’s disaster struck only a day after US President Joe Biden announced a complicated workaround to build a temporary pier off Gaza’s coast to deliver aid, a move criticised as an attempt to divert attention from the looming famine and Israel’s consistent blocking of assistance to the enclave.
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said that the United Kingdom would be participating in the project, but said it would “take time to build”.
While welcoming the development, he nevertheless urged Israel to open its own port of Ashdod in the meantime.
“We need to make a difference right now,” he said.
Meanwhile, a maritime corridor delivering aid from Cyprus to the besieged enclave – a collaboration of a number of partners, including European countries, the US, and the UAE – could be established as soon as this weekend, according to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Six children have died from dehydration and malnutrition at hospitals in northern Gaza, the Health Ministry in the besieged Palestinian territory has said, as the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the besieged enclave worsens.
Two children died at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the ministry said on Wednesday. Earlier it reported that four children died at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, while seven others remained in critical condition.
“We ask international agencies to intervene immediately to avert a humanitarian catastrophe in northern Gaza,” Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra said in a statement, as Israel’s attacks on Gaza continue.
“The international community is facing a moral and humanitarian test to stop the genocide in Gaza.”
Kamal Adwan Hospital’s Director Ahmed al-Kahlout said that the hospital had gone out of service due to a lack of fuel to run its generators. On Tuesday, Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia also went out of service for the same reason.
In a video posted on Instagram and verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad verification unit, journalist Ebrahem Musalam shows an infant on a bed inside the pediatric department at Kamal Adwan Hospital, as power comes in and out.
Musalam said the children in the department are suffering from malnutrition and a lack of infant formula, and that necessary devices have stopped working due to the constant power outages as a result of fuel shortages.
Palestinian group Hamas on Wednesday said that the closure of Kamal Adwan Hospital would exacerbate the health and humanitarian crisis in Northern Gaza, which is already teetering on the brink of famine as Israel continues to block or disrupt aid missions there.
‘Killing and starvation’
On Wednesday, Israel said a convoy of 31 trucks carrying food had entered northern Gaza. The Israeli military office that oversees Palestinian civilian affairs, the Coordination of Government Activity in the Territories (COGAT), also said nearly 20 other trucks entered the north on Monday and Tuesday.
These were the first major aid deliveries in a month to the devastated, isolated area, where the United Nations has warned of worsening starvation.
Israel has held up the entry of aid into Gaza for weeks, with Israeli protesters taking part in demonstrations calling for no aid to be allowed into the territory, even as hunger and disease spread.
UN officials say Israel’s months-long war, which has killed nearly 30,000 people in Gaza, has also pushed a quarter of the population of 2.3 million to the brink of famine.
Project Hope, a humanitarian group operating a clinic in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, has said that 21 percent of the pregnant women and 11 percent of the children under the age of five it has treated in the last three weeks are suffering from malnutrition.
“People have reported eating nothing but white bread as fruit, vegetables, and other nutrient-dense foods are nearly impossible to find or too expensive,” Project Hope said.
Qatar, France Reaffirm in Joint Communique Depth, Breadth of Their Strategic Partnership
— Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Qatar (@MofaQatar_EN) February 28, 2024
In a joint communique on Wednesday, Qatar and France stressed their opposition to an Israeli military offensive on Rafah in southern Gaza and underlined their “rejection of the killing and starvation suffered by the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip”.
They called for the opening of all crossings into Gaza, including in the north, “to allow for humanitarian actors to resume their activities and notably the delivery of food supply and pledged jointly $200m effort in support of the Palestinian population”.
Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, also said Israel must allow aid trucks into Gaza in order to address the dire humanitarian crisis.
“Hundreds of aid trucks wait in line to cross into Gaza at the Rafah and Kerem Shalom [Karem Abu Salem] crossings to a starving civilian population,” Egeland said in a social media post, with a video showing scores of aid trucks lined up.
“There has not been a single day we have gotten the needed 500 trucks across. The system is broken and Israel could fix it for the sake of the innocent.”
Hundreds of aid trucks wait in line to cross into Gaza at the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings to a starving civilian population. There has not been a single day we have gotten the needed 500 trucks across. The system is broken and Israel could fix it for the sake of the innocent pic.twitter.com/dMb9gTbchJ
Medical aid group Doctors Without Borders, also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), has meanwhile said that medical workers are struggling to serve hundreds of thousands of displaced people in Gaza who are living in dire conditions with nowhere to go.
“Healthcare has been attacked, it’s collapsing. The whole system is collapsing. We are working from tents trying to do what we can. We treat the wounded. With the displacements, people’s wounds have been infected. And I’m not even talking about the mental wounds. People are desperate. They don’t know anymore what to do,” MSF’s Meinie Nicolai said.
Israel denies accusations it is blocking aid deliveries as UN says people are at risk of starvation in the besieged strip.
Before Israel’s war, most of the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza were already dependent on humanitarian assistance.
After four and a half months of a total siege, compounded by an intense bombing campaign, the situation is dire.
Access to aid has been a major aspect of the conflict. First, Israel blocked it, then it maintained tight control over deliveries, and now it is accusing United Nations agencies of failing to distribute it.
At the same time, its forces attack the besieged strip from the air, ground and sea.
So, what mechanisms are in place for Israel to ensure food and humanitarian assistance reaches the millions of people the UN says are at risk of starvation?
Presenter: Mohammed Jamjoom
Guests:
Andreas Krieg – Associate professor of security studies at King’s College London
Sarah Davies – Spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Israel and the Occupied Territories
Raymond Johansen – Secretary-general of Norwegian People’s Aid, and a former Norwegian state secretary for foreign affairs
As the war continues, the UN agency warns tens of thousands of children will ‘likely die’ without more aid.
At least 700,000 children in Sudan are likely to suffer from the worst form of malnutrition this year, and tens of thousands could die, the United Nations children’s agency has warned.
A 10-month war in Sudan between its armed forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has devastated the country’s infrastructure, prompted warnings of famine and displaced millions of people inside and outside the country.
“The consequences of the past 300 days means that more than 700,000 children are likely to suffer from the deadliest form of malnutrition this year,” James Elder, spokesperson for UNICEF, told a press conference in Geneva on Friday.
“UNICEF won’t be able to treat more than 300,000 of those without improved access and without additional support. In that case, tens of thousands would likely die.”
Elder defined the most dangerous form of malnutrition as severe acute malnutrition, which makes a child more likely to die from diseases such as cholera and malaria. He said 3.5 million children were projected to suffer severe acute malnutrition.
UNICEF provides “ready-to-use therapeutic food”, or RUTF, a life-saving food item that treats severe wasting in children under five years old, to Sudan.
Elder said there had also been a “500 percent increase” in just one year in murders, sexual violence and recruitment of children to fight.
“That equates to terrifying numbers of children killed, raped or recruited. And these numbers are the tip of the iceberg,” he said, reiterating the urgent need for a ceasefire, and for more aid.
‘Lethal combination’
Catherine Russell, the executive director of UNICEF, echoed Elder’s comments.
The “lethal combination of malnutrition, mass displacement, and disease” is quickly growing, she warned in a statement.
“We need safe, sustained, and unimpeded humanitarian access across conflict lines and across borders – and we need international support to help sustain the essential services and systems that children rely on for survival,” she said.
UNICEF is appealing for $840m to help slightly more than 7.5 million children in Sudan this year, but Elder deplored the lack of funds collected in previous appeals.
“Despite the magnitude of needs, last year, the funding UNICEF sought for nearly three-quarters of children in Sudan was not forthcoming,” Elder said.
The UN on Wednesday urged countries not to forget the civilians caught up in the war in Sudan, appealing for $4.1bn to meet their humanitarian needs and support those who have fled to neighbouring countries.
Half of Sudan’s population – approximately 25 million people – need humanitarian assistance and protection, while more than 1.5 million people have fled to the Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia and South Sudan, according to the UN.
“The world needs to stop turning a blind eye,” he said. “Where is our collective humanity if we allow this situation to continue.”
‘We will starve in the streets.’ Gaza residents say they will die without aid from UNRWA. Norway’s foreign minister tells Al Jazeera why his country will keep funding the agency in the face of Western cuts.
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