“At one point, we had around $10 billion, and now we may get six this year. I have to take food from the hungry to give it to the starving. Those are the decisions we are making every single day,” she said.

According to McCain, the funding decline has already forced the agency to lay off thousands of staff members while scaling back food assistance in several parts of the world.

“We laid off 6,000 people, and we still do not have enough money to feed everybody who is urgently hungry right now. It is daily fundraising, daily worry and daily efforts to figure out how to work with what we have,” she added.

WFP Deputy Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer Carl Skau argued that food in security should no longer be viewed only as a humanitarian issue but also as a global security concern.

“If you are a starving person, you basically have three choices. You die, you migrate, or you turn to trouble,” he said.

He pointed to regions including the Sahel, the Horn of Africa and parts of the Middle East , where conflict, displacement and hunger continue to overlap.

Skau also warned that humanitarian organisations are increasingly being forced into difficult ethical dilemmas while trying to deliver aid in conflict zones.

“There are often only bad options. Sometimes governments insist on military escorts to reach starving communities, even when that goes against humanitarian principles. But if we refuse, thousands of people could die,” he said.

Cindy McCain, who has announced plans to step down due to health reasons, expressed frustration over what she described as declining global attention toward food insecurity and humanitarian crises.

“People are literally dying from lack of food, and yet many leaders are doing nothing. I never thought I would say that because I have always believed in the humanity of the world, but we are seeing a real lack of urgency,” she said.

Despite the challenges, both leaders highlighted school feeding programmes as one of the most effective long-term interventions against hunger and poverty.

Watch the attached video for a review of the panel discussion at The Sedona Forum .