UN states war in Iran affects shipment of 70,000 tons of food to crisis countries

Bottlenecks in international transport caused by the war in Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz are affecting the shipment of about 70,000 tons of food to countries in humanitarian emergencies, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned this Tuesday. "It is the most significant disruption to the supply chain we have seen since COVID and the war in Ukraine," said WFP Logistics Director Corinne Fleischer at a press conference. Although the WFP does not send food to the Gulf countries most affected by the Hormuz blockade, nor from them to other areas, the agency has been affected by the domino effect, Fleischer explained. "The backlog of ships in ports restricts container capacity," she said, and predicted that the effects could continue even after the war ends, recalling that during the COVID crisis, it took about five months to stabilize maritime traffic when the pandemic subsided. One of the WFP operations most affected is the delivery of aid to Afghanistan, where about 17 million people suffer from food insecurity, the agency representative indicated. "We get most of our supplies in Pakistan, but with the start of the war between the two countries, we redirected the cargo to arrive through Iran, and when we were in that process, the war broke out," she indicated. Now, food shipments to Afghanistan must undertake a long road journey from Dubai, where they are sent by the WFP, by road through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan. "That adds about a thousand euros per ton and practically three more weeks, although it has allowed us to test an alternative land route if the situation continues," Fleischer explained.