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Aid Groups Warn Excluding Lebanon From Ceasefire 'Risks Prolonging the Crisis'
"Until there is an end to all hostilities, across the entire region, no one will feel truly safe."
Apr 08, 2026
Humanitarian aid organizations warned Wednesday that the Iran ceasefire touted by US President Donald Trump as a monumental step toward peace is at risk of collapsing entirely if it doesn't halt Israel's bombardment of Lebanon, which reached its most intense phase yet in the hours after the two-week truce was announced.
David Miliband, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, said the ceasefire announcement late Tuesday was a "welcome step" but warned it was "partial, fragile, and incomplete," pointing to Trump and Israel's claim that Lebanon was not included in the deal's terms. Pakistan, the key mediator of the truce, has said Lebanon was part of the agreed-upon ceasefire, and a halt to Israeli attacks on the country was included in a widely circulated 10-point Iranian plan that Trump characterized as "a workable basis on which to negotiate."
Miliband said Wednesday that leaving "one front of the conflict burning risks prolonging the crisis, not resolving it."
Ahmad Alhendawi, Save the Children's regional director for the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe, similarly warned that the current ceasefire deal, as implemented, "is not enough."
"We're urgently calling for a definitive ceasefire for the wider region, which includes Lebanon, to protect children from further harm," said Alhendawi. "A whole generation of children bears the brunt of this conflict. A definitive ceasefire for the entire regional conflict, including Lebanon, is the only way to truly protect children’s lives and futures and end the suffering. The violence must end before more children suffer irreparable harm.”
Iranian officials have responded with outrage to Israel's intensified assault on Lebanon, which has killed hundreds of people on Wednesday alone and wounded many more. Abbas Araghchi, Iran's foreign minister, said the Trump administration "must choose—ceasefire or continued war via Israel."
"It cannot have both," he added. "The world sees the massacres in Lebanon. The ball is in the US court, and the world is watching whether it will act on its commitments."
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Iran has informed regional mediators that its participation in planned in-person talks in Pakistan's capital "is conditional on a ceasefire in Lebanon" as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to "continue to strike" the country.
"Sounds like somebody needs to rein in Israel ASAP," Brian Finucane, senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group, wrote on social media.
"The American people want this war to end and bombing downtown Beirut is not a path to peace."
Trump insisted to a PBS reporter on Wednesday that Lebanon was "not included in the deal," claiming the Israeli assault on the country is "a separate skirmish."
But top Iranian officials, aid organizations, and US lawmakers who support a lasting peace agreement view the conflicts across the region as interconnected.
“Aggression towards Lebanon is aggression towards Iran,” Gen. Seyed Majid Mousavi, aerospace commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said Wednesday.
US Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) urged the Trump administration "must immediately make clear to Israel that the ceasefire agreement is not and cannot be functional without a ceasefire in Lebanon."
"The American people want this war to end," Beyer added, "and bombing downtown Beirut is not a path to peace."
Amitabh Behar, executive director of Oxfam International, said in a statement that "until there is an end to all hostilities, across the entire region, no one will feel truly safe."
"Israel’s ongoing invasion in Lebanon, its destructive occupation of Palestinian territory, ground incursion and airstrikes in Syria, its continued attacks in Gaza, and violent attacks and territorial expansion in the West Bank are still continuing despite the provisional cessation of violence with Iran," said Behar. "This deadly toll across the Middle East is intolerable and must stop."
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Aid Group Warns US-Israeli War on Iran Has Unleashed ‘Triple Emergency’ With Devastating Consequences for Millions
“With global humanitarian needs already at record levels, further escalation of the conflict in the Middle East and wider region will have grave ramifications for crises across the world,” said one advocate.
Mar 20, 2026
The US-Israeli war against Iran has unleashed a "triple emergency" that is draining the global humanitarian aid system of resources and putting millions of the world's most vulnerable people at even greater risk, according to a dire warning issued Friday by the International Rescue Committee.
The war has already resulted in the deaths of thousands and the displacement of millions of people in Iran and Lebanon. But the IRC says that the ripple effects of the war are beginning to spread to conflict zones across the world.
The conflict has caused many nations in the region to partially or fully close their airspace, leaving critical cargo stranded.
Meanwhile, Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for US and Israeli attacks has disrupted the flow of more than 20% of the world’s oil exports, sharply raising transport costs and straining budgets that could go toward lifesaving aid.
“Medical aid is highly dependent on international transport,” said Willem Zuidema, Save the Children’s global supply chain director. “The blockage in the Strait of Hormuz, combined with spiking cost for insurance and fuel, is directly impacting patients in our health facilities, at the worst time possible.”
IRC said $130,000 worth of pharmaceutical aid intended for its humanitarian response to the conflict in Sudan has been left stranded in Dubai due to the strait's closure.
According to Save the Children, this delay has put 90 primary healthcare facilities across Sudan at risk of running low on supplies.
More than 400,000 children, the group estimated, could be affected by the inability to receive antibiotics, antimalarial drugs, pain and fever medications, and other treatments.
The group said it has been forced to deliver the aid using the much more costly method of transporting it across Jeddah, where it will be carried by sea freight to Sudan, which the group said could add as much as $1,000-2,000 per container.
The same is true of humanitarian zones in Afghanistan and Yemen, where treatments for thousands of children must now be delivered by air or by land, dramatically raising the costs.
The closure of the strait has also forced many vessels carrying aid to find alternative routes. IRC said its shipping partners have been forced to reroute their operations to instead travel around Africa's Cape of Good Hope, adding up to a month for ocean freight deliveries to war zones on the continent.
"What we are seeing is the war in Iran unleashing a triple emergency," said David Milliband, the president and CEO of IRC.
"First, a surge in humanitarian need, with Lebanon now the most visible humanitarian scar and one of the fastest-growing displacement crises in the world, with over one million people forced from their homes in weeks," he said.
"Second, a global economic shock, as disruptions to food, fuel, and fertilizer markets, putting up to 30% of fertilizer trade at risk, threatens more than 300 million people already facing acute food insecurity," said Milliband, and "third, a system under strain, with more than 60 conflicts stretching diplomatic attention and funding to a breaking point, pushing crises like Sudan and Gaza further down the list of priorities."
Milliband marveled at the priorities of the powers prosecuting the war. He pointed to a recent estimate from the Pentagon that the first six days of the war alone cost $11.3 billion, noting that "just $4 billion is enough to pay for treatment for every acutely malnourished child in the world."
Zuidema said that the "grave ripple effects" caused by the war are exacerbated by the fact that "governments are cutting vital foreign aid budgets."
He called on all parties to the war to cease hostilities and to adhere to their obligations under international law, including allowing the free flow of humanitarian aid.
“There should be no barriers to lifesaving supplies: Exemptions should be put in place to allow humanitarian supplies, fertilizer, and food to be able to move through the Strait of Hormuz,” Zuidema said. “With global humanitarian needs already at record levels, further escalation of the conflict in the Middle East and wider region will have grave ramifications for crises across the world.”
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Gaza Children Without 'Strength to Speak or Even Cry,' Says Aid Group Chief
"When there is not enough food, children become acutely malnourished, and then they die slowly and painfully," the CEO of Save the Children told a United Nations Security Council meeting this week.
Aug 28, 2025
Inger Ashing, the CEO of Save the Children, delivered an urgent plea for action to end the Israeli-created humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, which she described in graphic terms.
Ashing told a United Nations Security Council meeting on Wednesday that there can be no doubt that Gaza is facing a full-blown famine that will result in mass starvation unless the international community steps in to end it.
"When there is not enough food, children become acutely malnourished, and then they die slowly and painfully," she said. "This, in simple terms, is what famine is."
Ashing then described how Palestinian children's bodies are eating their own muscles and organs just to stay alive amid systemic hunger imposed by Israel's military blockade.
"Children do not have the strength to speak or even cry out in agony," she said. "They lie there, emaciated, quite literally wasting away."
Cindy McCain, the executive director of the United Nations World Food Program, put out a video statement Thursday morning in which she said that Gaza was "at a breaking point" due to mass hunger.
"Half a million people here in Gaza are starving, and many more are on the edge," she said. "Famine is expected in the coming weeks if food doesn't reach the thousands of starving families here fast enough. The desperation is overwhelming."
McCain emphasized that the World Food Programme can reach these starving civilians and save lives, but added that it first needed "safe routes and sustained access" to Gaza to make it happen.
"We must deliver at the scale this crisis demands," she said.
Ashing and McCain's pleas for action came less than a week after the United Nations-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC) declared a famine in Gaza that it warned was projected to get even worse in the coming weeks.
"Between mid-August and the end of September 2025, conditions are expected to further worsen with famine projected to expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis," the IPC stated. "Nearly a third of the population (641,000 people) are expected to face catastrophic conditions (IPC Phase 5), while those in emergency (IPC Phase 4) will likely rise to 1.14 million (58%). Acute malnutrition is projected to continue worsening rapidly."
The Gaza Health Ministry has estimated that 317 people in Gaza, including 121 children, have so far died from severe hunger as a result of the Israeli blockade.
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