WFP concerned by food shortages for refugees

The World Food Programme (WFP), facing a serious shortage of resources for just over 210,000 refugees it assists in Kenya, has been forced to progressively reduce the daily rations distributed since January.

By mid-April, the rations were just 1,399 calorie rations per day per refugee instead of the 2,100 Kcal daily ration recommended, WFP spokesperson Lauro Melo told IRIN.

This reduction had resulted in a deterioration of the nutritional situation of the refugee population, including an increase of 172% in malnutrition rates among children under five as a direct consequence of the reduction in daily rations between January and June, according to Melo.

Within Kenya, WFP provides food relief for 78,443 refugees, mainly from southern Sudan, in Kakuma refugee camp, Turkana District, north-western Kenya. In Dadaab, Garissa District, eastern Kenya, the agency is assisting 131,716 refugees – mainly Somali but with some from Ethiopia and Zanzibar- in three camps: Hagadera, Ifo and Dagahaley. In all, the number of refugee beneficiaries of food aid in Kenya is 210,159.

The refugees’ concentration in Dadaab and Kakuma, arid and isolated areas, leaves them with insufficient access to water for cultivation and no access to employment. They are also subject to travel restrictions that limit their access to markets for trade, so they face serious difficulties developing any sort of self-reliance, according to WFP. As a result, the refugees are almost totally dependent on aid to meet their food needs.

However, due to competition with other humanitarian crises, the refugee programme has received very little support from donors, according to WFP. Since October 200, donations from the US, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark have totalled about 35,000, with the most recent US and Dutch donations in July expected to allow WFP to provide daily rations of 1,700 kcal daily from early August to December, it said.

WFP’s stocks of maize and vegetable oil for refugees are totally depleted and there are no further pledges from donor countries; the existing stocks of pulses will run out by mid-August, and there are no further pledges from donors, Melo added.

It was likely that some of the donors were concerned by the extended period that the Sudanese and Somali refugee caseloads had been in Kakuma and Dadaab, and maybe considered that there had to be some kind of movement towards a transition, humanitarian sources told IRIN on Tuesday.

Although the arid condition left little scope for crop production and the refugees were, in any case, barred by the Kenyan government from engaging in any economic activity, there had to be some scope for movement - whether through advocacy for refugees to have some economic opportunity and self-reliance, or through some limited scope for repatriation, or through some other mechanism, they said.
One way or another, it was necessary to break a growing situation of dependency among the refugees in Kakuma and Dadaab, the sources added.

The WFP warning about a shortage of resources for the refugee programme in Kenya follows an alert by the NGO Medecins sans frontieres (MSF) in late June that malnutrition rates in Dadaab refugee camp would continue to rise unless donors strengthened the food pipeline.

In January, 72 children under five years of age were registered in MSF’s therapeutic feeding centres, but this increased by 172 percent in under six months, to 196 children by mid-June, the agency stated.

There were no official plans to shut down Kakuma or Dadaab, nor to repatriate the refugees, so “the protection and care of these refugees remains the responsibility of the international community,” it said.

“Just because they are an old caseload of refuges does not mean it is acceptable for food rations to go down, and for the number of severely malnourished children to go up. The food pipeline must be strengthened,” said Manu Moncada, MSF Head of Mission in Kenya.

An official of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the main contributor to WFP’s refugee feeding programme in Kenya, said the food allocated to Protracted Relief and Recovery Operations (PRROs) such as this amounted to a global pledge to WFP, from which it decided on allocations to particular countries and programmes.

The exhaustion of resources for the Kenya refugee programme could, therefore, be traced back to the original allocations made by WFP for the year ending 30 September, the source said.

Meanwhile, in face of the dependency of the refugee populations in Kakuma and Dadaab, food shortages and reduced rations created “serious security concerns”, according to the WFP.

“There’s a serious risk that refugees will start protesting against food shortages, creating great instability locally and endangering the safety of WFP staff,” Laura Melo told IRIN.

In all, WFP’s assistance programme to refugees faced a shortfall of supplies of about 10,500 mt to the end of this year, and “urgent contributions are required to prevent the further deterioration of the nutritional situation of the refugee population,” she added.