These last few days we not only have seen how ISIS or the fighters for IS destroyed the treasures of culture and unashamed pitiless killed thousands of innocent people and animals. In many countries at the south half of this world several tribes bring suffering to each other and make it that millions of peopel have to flee for the violence.
The West can only look how she is not able to bring a solution in those war-countries. It only can note a collective failure. It also does not manage to get a good working international
refugee regime.
Without addressing these inadequacies and putting other
policies and strategies in place, the World Food Programme and UNHCR also faces a crisis with a $186 million funding gap.
The
UN refugee agency and the World Food Programme (WFP) on Tuesday
warned that funding difficulties, compounded by security and logistical
problems, have forced cuts in food rations for nearly 800,000 refugees
in
Africa, threatening to worsen unacceptable levels of acute
malnutrition, stunting and anaemia, particularly in children.
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| Ambassador Ertharin Cousin, the United States Representative to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture, addresses volunteers at the Earth Day Tri-Mission Community Project in Rome, Italy. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
WFP Executive Director
Ertharin Cousin and UN High Commissioner for
Refugees
António Guterres, at a meeting with government representatives
in Geneva, made an urgent joint plea for US$186 million to allow WFP to
restore full rations and prevent further cuts elsewhere through December
2014. For its part, UNHCR needs US$39 million for nutrition support it
provides to malnourished and vulnerable refugees in Africa.
"Many refugees in Africa depend on WFP food to stay alive and are now
suffering because of a shortage of funding," Cousin said. "So we are
appealing to donor governments to help all refugees – half of whom are children – have enough food to be healthy and to build their own futures."
Across Africa, 2.4 million refugees in some 200 sites in 22 countries
depend on regular food aid from the World Food Programme. Currently, a
third of those refugees have seen reductions in their rations, with
refugees in Chad facing cuts as high as 60 per cent.
Supplies have been cut by at least 50 per cent for nearly 450,000
refugees in remote camps and other sites in the
Central African
Republic, Chad and
South Sudan. Another 338,000 refugees in Liberia,
Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Ghana, Mauritania and Uganda have seen their
rations reduced by between five and 43 per cent.
In addition, a series of unexpected, temporary ration reductions has
affected camps in several countries since early 2013 and into 2014,
including in Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Republic of
Congo, Democratic
Republic of the Congo, and Cameroon. Some cuts were also due to
insecurity that affected deliveries.
"The number of crises around the world is far outpacing the level of
funding for humanitarian operations, and vulnerable refugees in critical
operations are falling through the cracks,"
said Guterres.
"It is
unacceptable in today's world of plenty for refugees to face chronic
hunger or that their children drop out of school to help families
survive,"
he said, calling for a rethink on funding for displacement
situations worldwide.
A joint UNHCR-WFP report issued in conjunction with today's Geneva
meeting says that refugees are among the world's most vulnerable people
and warns that reductions in their minimum rations can have a
devastating impact on already weakened populations.
Many refugees arrive in countries of exile already in urgent need of
emergency nutritional care. Lacking any means to support themselves in
many host countries, they remain totally dependent on international
assistance
– sometimes for years
– until they can return home or find other solutions. Generally, WFP tries to provide 2,100 kilocalories per refugee per day.
Guterres warned that while a sustained 60 per cent reduction in
rations would be catastrophic for refugees, even small cuts can spell
disaster for undernourished people. The impact, especially on children,
can be immediate and often irreversible.
Undernutrition during a child's
first 1,000 days from conception can have lifelong consequences,
compromising both physical growth and mental development. Numerous
studies have shown that this "stunting" leaves affected children at a
severe social and economic disadvantage for the rest of their lives.
Even before the most recent ration cuts, refugees in many of the
camps surveyed were already experiencing unacceptable levels of
malnutrition, despite some progress over the past five years in
improving nutrition standards. For example, a programme to prevent and
treat micro-nutrient deficiencies has helped to slow or even reverse
rising malnutrition rates and associated problems in some areas. But the
current shortfall now threatens to negate even those hard-won gains.
Nutritional surveys conducted between 2011 and 2013 showed that
stunting and anaemia among children was already at critical levels in
the majority of the refugee sites. Only one of 92 surveyed camps, for
example, met the agencies' goal of fewer than 20 per cent of refugee
children suffering from anaemia. And fewer than 15 per cent of camps
surveyed met the target of less than 20 per cent stunting among
children. The surveys also showed that acute malnutrition levels among
children under five years of age remain unacceptably high in more than
60 per cent of the sites.
Refugees hit by the food shortages are struggling to cope, posing a
host of additional problems as they resort to what the report calls
"negative coping strategies." These include an increase in school
dropouts as refugee children seek work to help provide food for their
families; exploitation and abuse of women refugees who venture out of
camps in search of work; "survival sex" by women and girls trying to
raise money to buy food; early marriage of young girls; increased stress
and domestic violence within families; and increasing theft.
The end result, the report says, is a
"vicious cycle of poverty, food
insecurity, deterioration of nutritional status, increased risk of
disease, and risky coping strategies. Therefore, improving livelihood
opportunities and food security is paramount to break this vicious
cycle, and ensuring that previous investments and advances in nutrition
and food security are preserved."
In addition to urging donor governments to fully fund the refugee
food pipeline, WFP and UNHCR are also encouraging African governments to
provide refugees with agricultural plots, grazing land, working rights
and access to local markets to promote self-sufficiency among refugees.
Given the unpredictability of funding, the agencies are also refining
their methods of prioritizing those affected by possible cuts to ensure
that the most vulnerable are identified and receive the help they need.
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