ICRC cuts food aid to prisons

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) will cut its food aid to 17 prisons in Rwanda from January 2004, an official told IRIN on Wednesday. An estimated 15,000 inmates would be affected by the move. "It will be a first step in a long-term process that is intended to fully shift the responsibility of feeding the prisoners to the Rwandan government," Pascal Jequier, the head of ICRC's communication unit in the country, said. "We have agreed this with the Rwandan government." The move to cut food aid was also due to the ICRC's budgetary constraints, he added. He said food aid to six of the prisons would stop at the beginning of 2004 and would gradually reduce in the rest of the prisons. He said it was ICRC's long-term aim to eventually stop giving food aid to all prisons in the country. ICRC has been providing half of the food requirements for at least 89,000 inmates in the various prisons across Rwanda, at an annual cost of some US $10 million. It also provides sanitary materials, clean water and medication. On 4 December, while presenting the government's 2004 budget, Finance Minister Donald Kaberuka proposed an allocation of $2.72 million to be used to feed the inmates, to counter ICRC's planned partial withdrawal.