No fewer than five million refugees were in Africa as at 2016 from 2.6 million in 2011, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said.
The Executive Director of WFP, Ertharin Cousin, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, in a joint statement issued on Monday, also warned that no fewer than two million of the refugees were facing critical shortages in food assistance in 10 countries across Africa.
“The number of refugees in Africa nearly doubled from 2.6 million in 2011 to nearly five million in 2016.
“While donor funding for refugee assistance increased during this period, it did not keep pace with rapidly rising needs.
“As a result, the humanitarian response is significantly underfunded and this has forced cuts in food assistance for some groups of refugees.
“Ten refugee operations in Africa have experienced cuts and food rations have been dramatically cut – in some cases by up to 50 percent – in large operations including Cameroon, Chad, Kenya, Mauritania, South Sudan and Uganda,” Cousin and Grandi said.
The WFP and UNHCR chiefs explained that the refugees needed urgent intervention to prevent severe malnutrition and stay alive.
“Millions of refugees depend on WFP food and our work to treat and prevent malnutrition to stay alive.
“But in Africa, they are in danger of being overshadowed by large humanitarian crises elsewhere,” they said.
According to them, refugees in Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Burundi and Ethiopia have had specific commodities cut including micronutrient fortified blended foods, needed to ensure an adequate quality diet.
“We can’t imagine how difficult life is for thousands of refugee families with no food, and often denied the possibility to work or provide for themselves in other ways.
“Refugees are extraordinarily resilient, but cuts in food assistance – sometimes as high as 50 percent – are having a devastating impact on the health and nutrition of thousands of families,” they said.