UN aid agencies are struggling to access provinces overrun by Rwanda-backed M23 rebel fighters at the start of the year, although dramatic funding shortfalls for humanitarian work have also contributed to the dire situation. Kigali has consistently denied providing military backing to the group.

Help could be provided more easily if air access were re-established, WFP insisted, as two airports in M23 areas “have been closed basically since the end of January…we're urgently calling for a humanitarian air corridor, to be established”, said Cynthia Jones, WFP’s Country Director for DRC.

The alert follows the release of a report by UN-backed food insecurity experts at the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification platform (IPC), warning that nearly 25 million people are experiencing high levels of food insecurity, denoted as IPC3 on a scale of one to five, with five indicating famine.

This includes an alarming three million individuals who face “emergency” levels of hunger – IPC4 – a number that is “surging” and which is “almost double since last year”, said Ms. Jones.

“This means what for families? It means that they're skipping their meals, depleting all of their household assets. They're selling off their animals,” she said, speaking via video from Kinshasa to journalists in Geneva.

According to the UN agency, “people are already dying of hunger” in parts of eastern DR Congo.

Ms. Jones noted that fighting between M23 militiamen and DRC government forces is continuing, sparking new displacement and people “forced from their home over and over again”.

In eastern DR Congo, this has left about 5.2 million displaced people “including 1.6 million that have been displaced this year alone, making DRC one of the world's largest displaced person crisis”, the WFP official added.

Despite deepening hunger, funding is running out for lifesaving humanitarian work and the UN agency has been forced to reduce the number of people it assists, from around once million at the start of the year, to 600,000 now.

“We will only be able to support a fraction of those in need” moving forward, Ms. Jones said, in an appeal for $350 million to support emergency food and nutrition assistance over the next six months. “Without it, we will have to make further cuts reduce [assistance] even further, down to 300,000 - which is only 10 per cent of the three million in need.”

Without a significant funding boost, the WFP warned of a “total pipeline break” in assistance by March 2026.

“That means a complete halt of all emergency food assistance in the eastern provinces.”

The dire funding shortfall has also impacted the agency internally, too. “We're starting to close downtown offices, we're reducing our footprint, the number of staff and juggling how to maintain the operational capacity to deliver in a very complex environment,” Ms. Jones explained.

And yet aid assistance remains vital for those displaced in eastern provinces including North Kivu, South Kivu, Ituri and Tanganyika because vital services have closed amid ongoing insecurity.

“The banks are closed, there's no money available and this has just had a major impact on the population and on the humanitarian response,” Ms. Jones explained. “It has devastated livelihoods and really put the food security of affected people in dire, dire circumstances.”

As the conflict drags on, families seek shelter in urban centres such as Ituri, where host communities are already struggling to cope. Equally worrying is the fact that millions of subsistence farmers forced from their homes or too fearful to access their land have missed the planting season this year.

“The women, children, men, they've just been suffering devastating sequences of the violence, perpetrated by the non-state armed groups and fleeing from conflict. They're tired, exhausted and need peace,” Ms. Jones insisted.