WFP denies rising food-related tension in Dadaab

The WFP said on Friday it had no knowledge of a reported threat by refugees in Dadaab refugee camps, northeastern Kenya, to stage a hunger strike in protest at a reduction in regular food rations. A general food distribution had this week been completed in the camp, and the Nairobi office of WFP would have heard of any such action if it existed, an official told IRIN on Friday. The refugees - among them Somalis, Ethiopians, Sudanese, Rwandans and Zanzibaris - had threatened to go on hunger strike in protest at their rations being slashed by one-third, with a resultant increase in malnutrition among refugee children, the Panafrican News Agency (PANA) reported on Thursday. Refugees had been quoted as saying that they felt discriminated against because UNHCR was denying them the conditions that were offered to refugees in Europe, the report added.

There was a refugee protest of two days’ duration in mid-May because there was no wheat flour available, due to resource limitations, but there was no serious word of any renewed threat of late, WFP told IRIN. There were problems with the food pipeline for the refugees in Dadaab, partly because of a weak donor response to a WFP alert in early May but also as a result of the generalised drought emergency in Kenya, and the wider Horn of Africa region, this year, officials said. WFP planned to meet UNHCR officials on Monday, 11 June, to consider its approach to the provision of food in Dadaab, they added.