WFP runs out of food for 27,000 CAR refugees

The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday it had received less than half the money required to feed 27,000 refugees from Central African Republic (CAR) and warned it would stop assisting them at the end of July unless it received fresh funds urgently. “We currently have less than 440 tonnes of food in stock, which represents less than a month of supplies for the refugees. If we do not receive more funding for this operation, WFP will be forced to stop assisting Chadian refugees who are reliant on food aid”, WFP Chad Representative and Country Director Philippe Guyon Le Bouffy told IRIN by telephone from the Chadian capital N'djamena. More than 40,000 refugees from CAR flooded into southern Chad after fighting broke out between former president Ange-Felix Patasse and his army chief of staff, General Francois Bozize in October 2002. Bozize eventually ousted Patasse with the assistance of several hundred Chadian mercenaries in March last year. In July 2003, WFP appealed for US$ 3.4 million to feed the refugees from CAR in southern Chad. But to date it has received less than half that amount, leaving a shortfall of US$ 1.9 million. Most of the remaining refugees - about 27,000 - are grouped in two refugee camps at Amboko, near the Chadian border town of Gore, and Yaroungo, near Maro, 250 km to the east. But WFP said their plight had been overshadowed by the subsequent influx of nearly 200,000 refugees into eastern Chad from Sudan's troubled Darfur province and they had been largely forgotten by the international community. “International media and donors are focusing their attention on the emergency operation in the east of Chad; Central Africa appears to be strategically not really interesting”, Guyon Le Bouffy told IRIN. However, WFP's operation aimed at feeding 180,000 refugees Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad is also seriously under-funded. The organisation said donors had only contributed two thirds of the US$ 30 million required to feed them until the end of this year. Lino Bordigne, the UNHCR’s Deputy Representative in Chad said given the prevailing insecurity in CAR, the refugees in southern Chad were unlikely to go home soon. “Refugees from Central Africa are reluctant to go back, as there still is trouble along the border," Bordigne told IRIN. "One of the many problems is that the CAR security forces are said to be searching for supporters of the former Central African President”, he added. Most of the Chadian fighters who helped Bozize to gain power have been given a cash payment and have been sent home, but they are now idle and have been blamed for growing banditry on both sides of the Chad-CAR frontier and even in northern Cameroon. Preparing the CAR refugees for a longer stay in southern Chad, UN agencies have moved them to sites where they will have access to cultivable land. “UNHCR moved the refugees to two sites with important agricultural potential. In collaboration with WFP, we are trying to provide them with food for an additional year, in the hope they’ll be self sufficient by then”, Bordigne said. Medecins Sans Frontieres Belgium, which is in charge of health, water and sanitation in the two refugee camps, said they were in good health, but would continue to rely on food handouts for some time yet. Stephane Heymens, the head of MSF-Belgium in Chad, told IRIN “Food distribution should continue to these refugees whose situation will remain fragile until the next rainy season allows them to become more self-sufficient.”