Ottawa would be hard-pressed to step in and help fill part of a funding shortage that has forced the United Nations to scale back its support programs to vulnerable families in Palestine, says Canada’s international development minister.

The World Food Programme (WFP) says it is facing a severe funding shortfall in Palestine that will affect some 193,000 of the poorest people in Gaza and the West Bank as of January 2019.

Faced with the funding shortfall, WFP is set to cut aid to 27,000 people in the West Bank while it reduces by 20 per cent monthly assistance to families in the most dire need, the agency said.

WFP says it needs $57 million US to maintain the current level of support to 360,000 people in 2019.

“WFP’s assistance has been a lifeline to tens of thousands of people who have exhausted all their meagre resources while trying to cope with unabated and mounting hardships,” WFP Representative and Country Director in Palestine Stephen Kearney said in a statement. “As the gap between rising food needs and available resources continues to widen, WFP has no alternative but to take these difficult decisions.”

Having visited the Palestinian territories last summer, Canada’s International Development Minister Marie Claude Bibeau said she is saddened to hear the news but noted there is little Canada can do to help.

“Learning that one of our main partners, WFP, will have to cut some basic services for this population is really heart-breaking,” Bibeau said in a year-end telephone interview from her home riding of Sherbrooke, Quebec. “We, obviously, will follow this situation, but Canada cannot always compensate with all these cuts, especially for this region.”

The UN food agency is already the number one recipient of Canada’s international assistance funds, Bibeau said.

(listen to the full interview with Marie-Claude Bibeau as she discusses her government's record in 2018 and plans for 2019 in the field of international development)

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Hope for peace in Yemen

Armed Yemeni men hold their weapons as they gather in the capital Sanaa to show their support to the Shiite Huthi movement against the Saudi-led intervention, on December 19, 2018. - A hard-won truce in the battleground Yemeni city of Hodeida will collapse if rebel violations persist and the United Nations does not intervene, the Saudi-led coalition said on December 19. (Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images)

On the situation in Yemen, where warring parties have agreed to a ceasefire around the strategically important Red Sea port of Hodeida, Bibeau said Canada is hoping for a peaceful solution to the four-year-old conflict that has brought the country to the brink of a catastrophic famine.

“We have millions of people starving because of a human decision,”Bibeau said. “They’re not starving because of a natural disaster, they’re starving because of the conflict.”

Canada will continue supporting its humanitarian partners in the field in Yemen in the new year, Bibeau said.

“This is one of the most terrible conflicts and humanitarian crises in the world right now,” Bibeau said.

Looking back at 2018

British Prime Minister Theresa May, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, France's President Emmanuel Macron and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wait for U.S. President Donald Trump to join them for a family photo at the G7 Summit in Charlevoix, Quebec, Canada, June 8, 2018. (Leah Millis/REUTERS)

Looking back at 2018, Bibeau singled out the $3.8 billion funding pledges for girls’ education made at the G7 Summit in Charlevoix, Quebec, as the single most important achievement of the Liberal government in terms of international development, especially in light of its feminist foreign an...