WFP food for Sahrawi refugees

The World Food Programme (WFP) is to provide help for refugees from Western Sahara in south-western Algeria up to the end of March 2000 under a proposed Protracted Relief and Recovery Operation (PRRO). One of the main aims of the operation, expected to cost just under US $3.5 million, is “to provide 80,000 vulnerable people among the refugee populations in camps in Tindouf with the basic food requirements to sustain them while awaiting their repatriation”, according to WFP . The PRRO also aims “to assist 11,000 anaemic women and 8,000 severely malnourished children within supplementary feeding schemes to be implemented by NGOs” and “promote female participation in food management”. Thousands of Sahrawi fled to Algeria after Morocco annexed the former Spanish colony in 1975. A UN-sponsored Settlement Plan provides for a referendum on self-determination and the repatriation of the refugees and their families to Western Sahara.