As the world’s largest humanitarian agency, WFP’s core mission is to end global hunger.
Food insecurity and HIV continue to reinforce one another, creating overlapping vulnerabilities that undermine progress toward global HIV targets. People living with HIV face higher nutritional needs, reduced income-earning capacity and elevated health expenditures, all of which heighten the risk of food insecurity and weaken treatment adherence. Addressing these interconnected challenges is central to WFP's engagement in the global HIV response.
By embedding inclusive strategies in its broader food assistance programmes, WFP ensures that people living with HIV receive the support they need. In emergency contexts, WFP’s operational presence and rapid response keeps people living with HIV supplied with nutrient-rich foods, limiting the compounding effects of crisis. Beyond immediate relief, WFP leverages its social protection expertise, offering cash-based, in-kind and voucher transfers and nutrition support that tackle both economic and health barriers, break cycles of vulnerability, strengthen community resilience and contribute to robust national systems.
WFP’s Global Strategy 2025–2030, Feeding Health, the Last Mile on HIV, positions HIV as a crosscutting priority across emergency response, nutrition and social protection. It reflects WFP's commitment to reaching the most vulnerable populations, including people living with HIV, with integrated food, nutrition and livelihood support. To guide its priorities for 2026, WFP conducted a global HIV questionnaire with nearly 30 country offices, providing the clearest picture to date of operational realities. Countries consistently reported limited or no alternative resources for HIV activities, increasing reliance on UBRAF as the sole source of dedicated support, and growing pressure to wind down or hand over HIV-related work. These findings are shaping WFP's priorities for 2026, including strengthened integration of HIV across programme areas and targeted support to protect continuity of services for the most vulnerable populations.
The WFP Strategic Plan 2026-2029 further strengthens this commitment by explicitly recognizing people living with HIV as a priority group in WFP's lifesaving nutrition response. The plan ensures that prevention of wastage, micronutrient support and access to nutritious diets are systematically extended to populations facing heightened physiological and socioeconomic vulnerability and reflects WFP's continued focus on integrating inclusive approaches into national systems so that people living with HIV are not left behind in crisis or recovery contexts.
