{The UN World Food Programme is to slash in half food rations for half a million refugees in Kenya as it scrambles for funding amid an unprecedented number of emergencies around the globe.}<\/p>\n
Steve Taravella, a senior spokesman with the food agency, said the WFP was taking the last-resort measure in the wake of humanitarian crises in Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Central African Republic and now West Africa with the Ebola outbreak.<\/p>\n
Taravella said WFP expected it would have to reduce rations like this in other places as resources are stretched thin.<\/p>\n
“We really don’t want to be doing this,” he said. “Telling hungry people they’ll be receiving less food than they’re accustomed to is never easy.”<\/p>\n
As of Saturday, the 500,000 refugees in northern Kenya, most of them from South Sudan and Somalia, will receive a daily food ration of just over 1,000 calories, compared to the 2,100 calories a day they have been getting, through the end of January.<\/p>\n
That is when a United States food donation is expected to arrive, but that amount is expected to be enough for just six weeks.<\/p>\n
The WFP is trying to raise $38m to pay for its Kenya refugee operations for the next six months.<\/p>\n
This year has seen similar cuts elsewhere, notably in conflict-torn Syria and its neighbours, which have taken in millions of Syrian refugees.<\/p>\n
The announcement came as a convergence of droughts, harvest failures, locust invasions and political conflicts in Mali have left 4.75 million people without enough to eat, UN officials said.<\/p>\n
‘Not possible to help’<\/p>\n
UNICEF emergency director, Afshan Khan, said the children’s agency estimates that almost one million children in the country are suffering from varying degrees of malnutrition – and close to half a million youngsters will suffer from acute malnutrition by the end of the year.<\/p>\n
John Ging, the director of UN humanitarian operations, warned that without an urgent infusion of additional funds “we can expect that the situation will continue to deteriorate”.<\/p>\n
He said the UN had received $230 million of the $481m it needs for humanitarian aid for Mali – just 48 percent.<\/p>\n
The UN food agency has to rely on a patchwork of donor appeals and commitments. It had to make temporary cuts recently in North Korea and Congo as well.<\/p>\n
“Where there are so many true crises on the global landscape, it’s just not possible to continue providing help,” Taravella said.<\/p>\n
He said he believes this is the first time the agency has had to cut rations in Kenya, which has taken in a large number of refugees from conflict-hit places like Sudan, South Sudan and Somalia over the years.<\/p>\n
Source: AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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