A STRING of natural disasters and global conflicts, combined with drastic cuts to international aid, have left some of the world's neediest people suffering from serious food shortages, a United Nations official said today.

“We are managing globally a perfect storm … with food security needs going up dramatically,” Carl Skau, deputy executive director and chief operating officer at the World Food Programme (WFP) told the Associated Press news agency during a visit to Bangkok.

“We’ve seen a threefold increase only in the past five years and this year has been really tough also, with conflict increasing, extreme climate events and, on top of that, we now have a funding crunch where the WFP is losing some 40 per cent of our funding.”

He said recent flooding in Pakistan and a massive earthquake and drought in Afghanistan have exacerbated already difficult situations, leaving millions of people in need.

US President Donald Trump’s decision earlier this year to axe more than 90 per cent of the United States Agency for International Development’s foreign aid contracts and to slash $60 billion from overall assistance around the world — coupled with aid cuts by several European countries — has left the WFP and others with less means to respond, Mr Skau said.

“In Afghanistan two years ago, we were assisting 10 million people; today we are at around 1.5,” Mr Skau said, adding that there had already been a surge in malnutrition recorded, particularly among young children, over the last few months.

Conflicts in Myanmar, Sudan and Gaza have made it extremely difficult to reach people in need and the latter two countries are already facing famine conditions. A 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Myanmar in March has worsened the situation there.