WFP raises concern over food shortage at refugee camps

The United Nations World Food Programme has warned that hundreds of thousands of refugees living in camps in northern Kenya face a severe food shortage crisis, and appealed to the international community to "come forward" with contributions in order to avert a further deterioration of the situation.

In a message emotively entitled, "Refugees in Kenya celebrate World Refugee Day without enough to eat", the UN agency said it lacked the funds to supply food aid to 205,000 refugees currently living in the two main refugee camps of Dadaab and Kakuma, both in northern Kenya. World Refugee Day is celebrated annually on 20 June.

WFP said it had, in effect, reduced the food ration in Kakuma and Dadaab camps since February to the current figures of 1,600 and 1,900 kcal per person per day, respectively, which is below the recommended daily level of 2,100 kcal per day.

Further reductions in the refugees' food rations were anticipated unless new donor contributions of funds "came forward urgently", it added.

A donation by the Japanese government, which had enabled the purchase some 18,000 mt of cereals, had improved the situation somewhat, in addition to support from the United States and Sweden, the agency said.

However, WFP said, it was still short of funds to purchase about 3,200 mt of pulses, vegetable oil and Corn Soya Blend - a highly nutritional food for children - despite the contributions.

"These are protein-rich commodities and their absence in the regular food basket of the refugees has a major impact on the nutritional value of the food provided," WFP warned on Thursday.

"On this World Refugee Day, we are very concerned with food shortages," Tesema Negash, the WFP Representative in Kenya, said in the statement. "Our daily food ration is the bare minimum. Having to reduce it further poses a major threat to the nutritional status and health of the refugees."

Without urgent donations, WFP would have to make further cuts to the food rations in July, the statement added.

Respectively located in dry and inhospitable areas of northwestern and northeastern Kenya, refugees in Kakuma and Dadaab camps have few or no opportunities to fend for themselves and find independent sources of income.

Alarm bells regarding the critical food situation in the refugee camps began to ring earlier this month when the International Rescue Committee (IRC) warned that tens of thousands of refugees who had sought safety at Kakuma were under serious threat of food scarcity.

At the time, malnutrition levels in Kakuma camp stood at 17.3 percent, which IRC maintained was too high for an established refugee camp that had been in existence for a decade. "The high malnutrition rate suggests that there are many vulnerable people in Kakuma who, under continuing poor or deteriorating general rations, stand to slide into a life-threatening situation," it said.

Kakuma and Dadaab - which are home to refugees from Sudan, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Ethiopia, Congo and Uganda - suffered constant water shortages, IRC said. This, coupled with a hostile environment for agriculture, was increasing competition for scarce resources between the refugees and the local communities, it said.

With donor resources being diverted to new emergencies elsewhere, the situation of the refugees was getting more desperate - especially in light of Kenyan legislation which forbids refugees to live outside the camps and to integrate with local population, according to IRC.

"At Kakuma, the refugees are almost completely dependent on international humanitarian assistance for food and other supplies," it said. "Over the past two years, the United States has provided nearly 70 percent of food aid for Kakuma but, with global attention and charity being directed towards other refugees, such as the Afghans, resources for Kakuma are drying up, and it’s having an affect on the refugees who found sanctuary there."

World Refugee Day on Thursday provided an opportunity for WFP to raise yet again the alarm for the plight of the refugees, according to Negash.

"They rely on the international community and we have a commitment towards them that we cannot fail," he said. "It takes about three months for a pledge to be transformed into actual food available at the camps. We need contributions now to avoid a very serious crisis in the months to come."

According to WFP, the numbers of refugees in Kenya have significantly grown since 1999 due to high insecurity levels prevailing in neighbouring countries, such as Sudan and Somalia.

The latest influx to Kenya consists of some 5,000 Somali refugees, who have fled clan fighting in the Gedo Region of Somalia into the northeastern Kenyan border town of Mandera and are in the process of being transferred to Dadaab.