Ration reductions pose threat of malnutrition to refugees

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Wednesday that almost 220,000 refugees in Kakuma and Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya face malnutrition and a wider humanitarian crisis "unless urgent contributions are received to bolster the programme that feeds them".

The agency urged donors to come through urgently with donations to cover 11,000 mt of food "needed to prevent any further deterioration of the nutritional situation of the refugee population" in Kakuma, northwestern Kenya, and Dadaab, northeastern Kenya.

The shortage of funding for refugees in Kenya was a constant throughout last year, and had forced the WFP to repeatedly reduce rations, which had been cut by more than 30 percent from (the recommended) 2,166 kilo-calories to 1,400 kcal, the agency stated on Wednesday.

"We simply can't give what we don't have," said the WFP representative in Kenya, Tesema Negash, on Wednesday, as the agency warned that, without additional donations, further reductions were to be expected, "endangering the lives of the most vulnerable refugees".

In August 2001, WFP also warned that serious cuts in food rations and the resulting deterioration of the nutritional situation of the refugee population threatened to create serious security concerns. "There’s a serious risk that refugees will start protesting against food shortages, creating great instability locally and endangering the safety of WFP staff," the WFP information officer, Laura Melo, said at the time.

There were some 215,000 refugees in Kenya at the start of January, with some 132,00 in Dadaab (over 129,000 of those Somalis) and a little over 83,000 in Kakuma, where Sudanese (67,000-plus) are in the majority, but where there are also over 12,000 Somalis and over 2,000 Ethiopians, according to UNHCR.

In addition to the Somalis, Sudanese and Ethiopians, there are much smaller numbers of Ugandan, Congolese, Rwandan, Burundian, Eritrean and Tanzanian refugees in Kakuma and Dadaab, a spokesman added.

Most of the refugees based in these two camps are wholly dependent on food aid, according to WFP. The two camps are located in marginalised and arid areas, where other sources of food are almost nonexistent, it said on Wednesday.

The potential for refugees to generate their own income was also seriously restricted, it said, expressing concern not only for the hardship refugees would face given further food restrictions but also the tension that might result inside the camps.

In June last year, the nongovernmental organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) reported an "alarming increase" in malnutrition among Somali child refugees in Dadaab as general food distributions were reduced.

The European Commission-funded and FAO-implemented Food Security Analysis Unit (FSAU) said in its nutritional update for September 2001 that there was much concern about the welfare and nutritional status of the refugees in Ifo, Dagahaley and Hagadera camps in Dadaab, due to a reduction in general rations and the absence of essential items.

The lack of provisions, including oil and pulses, had "contributed to a rise in the number of malnourished children attending supplementary and therapeutic feeding programmes", the report added.

In Kakuma, too, there was concern about the reduction in daily calorie intake - not least from the refugees, according to an official from the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), which is an implementing partner with the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in running the camp, and has responsibility for food distribution there.

The organisation had been told that it, along with other implementing partners, should get involved in looking for ways to raise funds in order to supplement the WFP rations available to refugees, the official told IRIN on Friday. Implementing partners have also been forced to field more questions about food rations from concerned refugees, according to UNHCR Kenya.

The refugees in Kakuma and Dadaab know their entitlements, and when WFP cannot deliver full rations, it causes tensions, according to one UN official. UNHCR not having the funds to provide replacement shelter materials to all the refugees who had their huts destroyed during heavy rain and wind in November was also an abiding source of tension, he said.

In better times, the UN refugee agency might have had some leeway to distribute non-food materials with a trade value in order to provide refugees with some extra purchasing power that could allow them supplement WFP rations, but the refugee agency had its own funding difficulties which ruled out such an option, humanitarian sources told IRIN.

"It's very difficult to explain the problem of global funding difficulties to refugee camp residents and, clearly, such issues give rise to tensions," said one aid worker.

So far, there is no tension in the camps specific to the reduced food rations, but more a sense that they are adding to the general, underlying tension and anxiety that goes with living in a refugee camp, according to a UNHCR Kenya official.