UN cuts food rations for refugees in Kenya by half

By Magdalene Mukami.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AA) – The UN World Food Programme (WFP) on Tuesday announced that it would be cutting by half food rations for 434,000 refugees in Kenya’s Dadaab and Kakuma camps due to a funding shortage.

The WFP said that it was fast running out of vital resources needed to feed the thousands of refugees residing in the eastern Dadaab refugee complex -- the biggest refugee camp in the world -- and the Kakuma refugee camp located in the northwestern part of the country.

In a statement Anna Lisa Conte, WFP country director for Kenya called on the international community to step in and help raise $13.7million to provide food for the refugees between December and April 2017.

“We are appealing to donors to quickly come to the aid of the refugees, who rely on WFP food assistance for survival,” Conte said adding that the U.S. had sent a shipment of food aid worth $22 million.

“Without an urgent response from other donors, we will completely run out of food for more than 400,000 people in Dadaab and Kakuma at the end of February.”

The WFP said that refugees in the two camps receive a monthly food basket comprising of cereals, pulses, vegetable oil, nutrient-enriched flour and a cash transfer equivalent to a third of their minimum food requirement.

Dadaab, provides shelter to more than 280,000 Somali refugees fleeing from war back home. The Kakuma refugee camp shelters hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese refugees.