Melike Pala
14 April 2026•Update: 14 April 2026
Nearly 63% of planned humanitarian convoys to southern Lebanon have not been completed due to negative or absent responses to deconfliction requests, a senior UN official said Tuesday, warning that aid delivery is severely hampered by escalating violence.
"Nearly 63% of planned humanitarian convoys to southern Lebanon have not been completed due to negative or absent response or deconfliction requests... Even when convoys are cleared, our teams are being stopped at multiple holding points. Last week, one of our convoy missions took 15 hours to complete," Samer AbdelJaber, regional director for the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe at the World Food Program (WFP), told lawmakers in Brussels during a session at the European Parliament Committee on Development (DEVE).
AbdelJaber said the situation in southern Lebanon is particularly difficult, with more than 80% of markets reportedly affected and humanitarian needs rapidly outpacing available resources.
"If the crisis persists into mid-2026, up to 45 million additional people globally, including 5.2 million people across the Middle East and North Africa region, could be pushed into acute hunger," AbdelJaber warned.
He further said humanitarian supply chains are facing pressure "exceeding COVID-19 and the Ukraine war levels," citing higher costs, longer delivery times, and reduced predictability.
During the same hearing, Mohamad Mansour, coordinator of the Lebanon Humanitarian and Development Forum, called for stronger international action to ensure compliance with international humanitarian law, citing repeated violations of ceasefire arrangements and attacks on civilian infrastructure.
He urged the European Union to use its political leverage to push for the enforcement of humanitarian law and to ensure accountability for violations, as well as to safeguard humanitarian access.
"The EU can leverage and put pressure on the implementation of the humanitarian law, on ensuring accountability for people who are breaching the law and preventing humanitarian access in order not to reach the situation of Gaza and Lebanon again," Mansour said.
European Parliament Development Committee Chair Barry Andrews said during the session that a recent visit to Beirut had shown him the worsening humanitarian conditions on the ground, describing shortages of basic relief items and deteriorating living conditions for displaced populations.
