The World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that refugees in Kenya will face drastic reductions in food rations as global aid continues to decline, with significant cuts from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) among the main factors.
Residents of the Kakuma and Dadaab refugee camps began to experience the impact of the cuts as WFP introduced a new assistance model that prioritises certain groups over others.
The agency said rations are being reduced by 60 percent for the most vulnerable, including pregnant women and people with disabilities, and by as much as 80 percent for refugees with some form of income.
The two camps are home to nearly 800,000 people, most of them fleeing conflict and drought in Somalia and South Sudan, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Baimankay Sankoh, the organisation’s deputy country director in Kenya, said, “WFP’s operations supporting refugees in Kenya are under immense strain.”
“With available resources stretched to their limits, we have had to make the difficult decision to again reduce food assistance. This will have a serious impact on vulnerable refugees, increasing the risk of hunger and malnutrition.”
Baimankay Sankoh
Protests Erupt Over Priority Food Distribution
According to Catherine Soi, “There has been a lot of tension in the last couple of weeks or so,” she said. “People were very angry about what WFP is calling the priority food distribution, where some people will not get food at all and others are going to get a small fraction of the food.”
The situation escalated last week, with protests breaking out that left one person dead and several injured. According to Soi, WFP officials attributed the rationing system to aid reductions from donors such as USAID, forcing them to make “very difficult decisions about who gets to eat and who doesn’t.”
WFP worker Thomas Chica explained that the new system followed assessments conducted with partner organisations. Refugees are now categorised by their needs rather than by their refugee status. “We need to look at them separately and differently and see how best we can channel the system so that it provides,” Chica said.
The cuts come amid deepening fears about malnutrition in the camps. The Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) rate among refugee children and pregnant or breastfeeding women in Kenya is above 13 percent. Any rate above 10 percent is classified as a nutrition emergency.
“Already the food that is being issued is quite low, 40 percent of the recommended ration, and this is being shared by a bigger chunk of the population,” Chica noted, warning that supplies will not last as long as hoped.
The rationing, which took effect in February, is based on a daily recommended intake of 2,100 kilocalories. With its current funding, carried over from last year, WFP projects it can only continue providing assistance until December or January.
In May, the agency said it needed $44 million just to restore full rations and cash assistance for all refugees through August, underlining the severity of the funding gap.
