Save the Children warns oil price shock forces it to 'spend more to reach fewer children'

The charity Save the Children has said the oil price shock unleashed by Donald Trump’s war on Iran is forcing it to “spend more to reach fewer children”.

The NGO analysed the increased costs of transport, fuel, food and medical supplies as a result of the Middle East conflict.

It calculated that the extra burden of delivering aid had already been $13m (£10m), which could instead have allowed it to reach an additional 1.5 million children.

Willem Zuidema, Save the Children’s global supply chain director, said: “The conflict in the Middle East is not only putting children at risk in the region but also globally, because every spike in fuel prices drives up the cost of every truck, every shipment, every box of supplies we deliver around the world. We are being forced to spend more to reach fewer children.”

Developing countries have tended to be hit hardest by the oil shock, which the International Energy Agency has called the largest disruption to supplies in history. Many governments have introduced restrictions on energy use.

Save the Children operates in about 110 countries, with a particular focus on safeguarding children’s rights. Its health and nutrition programmes reached more than 30 million children last year, including in hard-to-reach countries such as Afghanistan.

The charity said the additional costs of delivering aid were equivalent to 47 health clinics in Afghanistan operating for six months, or five 30-bed hospitals in Somalia operating for a year.

Before the conflict, the oil price was expected to be about $60 a barrel during 2026. After the US administration went to war with Iran, prompting Tehran to choke supplies though the strait of Hormuz, it surged above $100 a barrel.

Prices declined after the US-Iran ceasefire in the summer but have jumped back above $90 in recent days as hostilities have resumed. Recent US rhetoric about increasing economic sanctions on Iran has raised fears the conflict could continue indefinitely.

With the strait of Hormuz also an important conduit for fertiliser, the crisis has increased the prices of other commodities including food.

Zuidema said Save the Children had been working to source alternative supplies and transport routes in an attempt to keep costs under control.

“Despite the extreme challenges and rising costs, our teams are working around the clock to find alternative and cost-effective ways to deliver essential supplies and ensure we reach children where it is needed the most,” he said.

The higher price of providing aid is coinciding with declining global aid budgets. The Trump administration has gutted USAID, the country’s development agency, and the UK is among the other countries reducing spending.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which gathers authoritative data, found that global aid spending plunged by 23% in real terms last year.

Save the Children has previously criticised the UK government’s deep cuts to the overseas aid budget, with Moazzam Malik, its director, calling them a “tragedy”.

Ed Miliband, the foreign secretary, who oversees aid spending, has been urged by charities and some Labour backbenchers to set out a path to fulfilling Gordon Brown’s promise to spend 0.7% of national income on aid.

Save the Children was set up in 1919 by two sisters, Eglantyne Jebb and Dorothy Buxton, who were horrified by the impact of a post-first world war export blockade on children in Berlin and Vienna.