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African refugees face severe food shortages
2003-055-5
3/12/2003
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[Episcopal News Service]
Over one million African refugees risk severe malnutrition and increased mortality if the international donor community fails to respond in full to the UN urgent appeal for $84 million, according to the International Rescue Committee, Jesuit Refugee Service, Refugees International and US Committee for Refugees. The four humanitarian agencies are alarmed by recent donor statements acknowledging that refugee food assistance is being cut to meet other emergencies. With war pending in Iraq, and the potential for massive humanitarian needs there, humanitarian agencies are concerned that donors will fail to fund urgent food needs in Africa.
Drought in Africa has created life-threatening food shortages for 38 million people. Refugees are among the most vulnerable in this group because their displacement has weakened their capacity to deal with food shortages. The latest joint appeal for refugee food assistance by the World Food Program (WFP) and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) totals $84 million to cover shortages over the next six months.
Approximately 3 million, or nearly one-fifth of the world's refugees, are in Africa. In addition to the immediate impact on malnutrition rates, food shortages in refugee camps have other grave consequences.
Richard Parkins, executive director of Episcopal Migration Ministries, noted the shortfall in refugee admissions this year and stated that 'a second year of low refugee arrivals has put the US resettlement program in a crisis mode. What is more tragic is that an international humanitarian crisis is being compounded as refugees remain in wretched camps or ghettos overseas. Their terror doesn't end.'
Parkins also commented that 'when refugees do not arrive to receive the hospitality which our parishes have to offer, we lose valuable opportunities to rescue desperate people and deny congregations the richness of this incredible ministry. One of my greatest concerns,' he said, 'is that the reservoir of support which we have developed for refugees will be eroded because refugees are not coming. If refugees do not come to our communities, this ministry of hospitality will wither.'
At a February 25 Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on world hunger, James T. Morris, the WFP's executive director, spoke clearly about how food shortages contribute to the exploitation of refugees in camps, including demands to trade sex for food. 'These are people that are already in very difficult circumstances, and food shortages lead to serious hostility and conflicts and make the camps almost impossible to manage. Also, particularly vulnerable are young girls, young girls who are forced to turn to things we don't find acceptable to find resources in order to be fed.'
Morris said that international donors are to be commended for their initial response to the larger emergency food needs throughout Africa, but due to specific vulnerabilities of refugees and their absence of coping mechanisms, it is imperative that refugee food needs not be sidelined, diverted or ignored. Already, food rations in many camps have been slashed up to 50%, with a threat in some camps of a complete break in the food pipeline. Donor governments must recognize, he argued, that food needs in Africa are so critical that a failure to fully respond to this urgent UN appeal in a timely fashion or any further diversion will directly result in massive malnutrition and severely increased mortality.
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