Cost of Inaction: The Impact of WFP Assistance Cuts on Refugees in Jordan

Since July 2023, funding shortfalls have forced WFP Jordan to scale back General Food Assistance for refugees. A joint WFP–UNHCR retargeting in host communities and funding shortage brought the number of WFP beneficiaries from 465,000 to 410,000 by September 2023; a further prioritization in July 2024 suspended assistance for another 100,000 people in the communities. For those who were assisted, rations fell. From July 2023, in host communities, households were split into two tiers: Priority 1 at 15 JOD (down from 23) and Priority 2 at 10 JOD (down from 21). In January 2024, community beneficiaries were unified to 15 JOD after Food Security Outcome Monitoring (FSOM) of the following season showed households on 10 JOD were less resilient and worse off than those on 15 JOD. After political changes in Syria (December 2024), some refugees began to return. As of September 2025, WFP assists 123,684 beneficiaries in host communities and 89,425 in camps. Need andcoverage The scale of WFP caseload is smaller than before—but the need is only looming. Till September, an estimated 320,000 refugees in Jordan are food-insecure. With the current budget, WFP can assist only a portion of them, leaving tens of thousandsunassisted. This brief counts the cost of doing less among households we currently assist. To see what that means, we begin with one ordinaryday in a Syrian refugee household