Refugee conditions worsen, UNHCR says

Sahrawi refugees, particularly women and children, in four Algerian camps are facing deteriorating health and nutritional conditions, the UNHCR reported on Thursday. Visiting agency staff members recently found the refugees at Dakhla, a desert camp, without sufficient funding and regular food aid, due to lapses in donor contributions "to one of the international community's oldest and most intractable refugee problems", UNHCR reported. It said that a joint UN inter-agency mission that visited the refugees in February reported them surviving from hand-to-mouth. "Their basic food aid needs over 2001 were met only irregularly due to frequent breaks in the food pipeline," Laura Lo Castro, an UNHCR senior food aid coordinator who visited the camps, said. The World Food Programme, which was also part of the delegation, provides flour, lentils, vegetable oil and sugar when available. Supplies of meat, vegetables and fruit are not part of the U.N.'s standard aid package, it added, and must be bought by those refugees able to afford the cost. UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers told the UN Security Council on 7 February that the plight of the Sahrawi refugees was unacceptable. [See http://www.unhcr.ch/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/home for full UNHCR report.]