Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2014 00:05:28 +0200
New thinking needed on food aid for refugees in Africa
By
<http://www.irinnews.org/report/100314/new-thinking-needed-on-food-aid-for-r
efugees-in-africa> Kristy Siegfried
JOHANNESBURG, 7 July 2014 (IRIN) - The World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN
Refugee Agency (UNHCR) have launched an urgent appeal to address a funding
shortfall that has already resulted in food ration cuts for a third of all
African refugees. As of mid-June, nearly 800,000 refugees in 22 African
countries have seen their monthly food allocations reduced, most of them by
more than half.
WFP is appealing for US$186 million to maintain its food assistance to
refugees in Africa through the end of the year, while UNHCR is asking for
$39 million to fund nutritional support and food security activities to
refugees in the affected countries. A joint
<http://www.unhcr.org/africafoodinsecurity/> report by WFP and UNHCR
released last week warns that failure to prevent continued ration cuts will
lead to high levels of malnutrition, particularly among children and the
most vulnerable.
Worst hit have been refugees in
<http://www.irinnews.org/report/100053/car-survivors-endure-squalid-camp-con
ditions-in-chad> Chad, Central African Republic (
<http://www.irinnews.org/report/100176/meagre-funding-for-car-refugee-influx
> CAR) and
<http://www.irinnews.org/report/100264/sudanese-refugees-in-south-sudan-caug
ht-between-two-wars> South Sudan where a total of nearly half a million
refugees are experiencing ration cuts of 50 to 60 percent.
The funding shortfall is not the result of shrinking budgets for either WFP
or UNHCR, but a substantial increase in the need for food assistance
generated by an unprecedented number of refugee emergencies in 2014. "The
amount of large-scale, simultaneous emergencies has never been so high to
the best of my memory," said Paul Spiegel, UNHCR's deputy director of
programme support and management, speaking to IRIN from Geneva.
Out of a global figure of 11.7 million refugees under UNHCR's protection at
the end of <http://www.unhcr.org/5399a14f9.html> 2013, the highest number
since 2001, 3.3 million live in Africa.
"There has also been a lot of earmarking [by donors] for certain situations,
particularly the Syrian situation," he added. "Some situations, particularly
CAR, have been severely under-funded so there is an equity issue here that
needs to be dealt with. Protracted refugee situations have also not had the
same level of funding."
Only about a quarter of those affected by the ration cuts are new arrivals,
according to Spiegel. The rest are long-term refugees who have been unable
to wean themselves off food aid, usually because they are confined to remote
camps where there are little or no possibilities for them to generate an
income.
Camps or communities?
As donors increasingly prioritize funding for the emergency phase of refugee
crises over protracted situations, UNHCR has had to shift its approach in
the last two years. "The big shift has been that we're looking at saying `if
we can avoid camps, let's do so'," explained Spiegel. "Having refugees be
amongst local communities is better for so many different reasons: it allows
them to be more self-reliant, reduces long-term dependence and UNHCR can use
its funding to improve existing communities."
But while UNHCR is advocating that refugees be allowed to settle in
communities rather than in camps, governments have the final say when it
comes to the refugees they host. For now, few are willing to grant refugees
even basic economic freedoms such as the right to work and live outside of
camps. Overcoming this reluctance will mean convincing host nations that,
given the chance, refugees have the capacity to boost rather than burden
local economies.
"We're now gathering more and more information in Africa and the Middle East
to show that improving refugee livelihoods, if it's done in a smart way, can
have a positive effect on host communities," Spiegel told IRIN.
He admitted that much of the evidence is still anecdotal and that there is a
need for more studies demonstrating the potentially positive impacts of
integrating refugees into local communities.
Where host governments insist on an encampment policy, said Spiegel, "we're
looking more at sustainability from day one, so if we have to have camps, we
would look at a development plan in that area."
This could include the placement of camps near existing communities,
reducing the need for aid agencies to develop parallel services and
increasing the likelihood of markets being available should refugees be
allowed to trade.
New livelihoods strategy
UNHCR is also attempting to reshape its livelihoods strategy to be more
responsive to socio-economic realities and more inclusive of host
communities. "In the past, livelihoods [interventions have] been a lot of
just keeping refugees occupied without a sufficiently market-oriented
approach," Spiegel said.
Alexander Betts of Oxford University's Refugee and Forced Migration Studies
programme agreed that "too often in the past, [UNHCR's] livelihoods
interventions have been abstracted from the market into which they're
intervening; they haven't been based on an understanding of what already
exists and how you build upon it."
Betts is director of the Humanitarian Innovation Project (
<http://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/research/humanitarian-innovation-project> HIP)
which seeks, in part, to expand the evidence base for giving refugees
greater economic freedom. Last month, Betts and his team released research
from Uganda, a country that allows the 387,000 refugees it hosts to live and
work outside designated refugee settlements. The
<http://www.irinnews.org/report/100284/refugee-economies-the-ugandan-model>
study found that 78 percent of the refugees surveyed did not receive any
international aid and instead relied on farming land allocated to them in
the refugee settlements or trading with fellow refugees and their Ugandan
neighbours.
"What we've tried to do with the research is offer data that can demonstrate
that governments prepared to offer basic economic freedoms [to refugees] can
in turn reap benefits," said Betts, who admitted that far more research into
the economic lives of displaced populations was needed if a major shift in
host nations' attitudes towards refugees was to occur.
Difficult choices
In the meantime, WFP and UNHCR are having to make hard choices about which
groups of refugees are more able to withstand ration cuts. Spiegel cited the
example of Chad where mainly Sudanese refugees living in the desert-like
east of the country have very few possibilities to sustain themselves
compared to refugees from CAR living in the south where the availability of
arable land for them to farm has made them more resilient.
"Also in Chad, we're doing surveys where we're trying to look at - even
within a camp - who are the most and least vulnerable," said Spiegel. "We
may even consider, based on consultations with communities and leaders,
giving full rations to some and smaller rations to others."
According to WFP spokesperson Elisabeth Byrs, "in situations of funding
constraints, WFP conducts vulnerability assessments to prioritize its
assistance to the most vulnerable."
Prolonged ration cuts, however, inevitably lead to refugees adopting
increasingly drastic coping strategies. "Refugees initially try to make do
by skipping meals, taking out loans and pulling their children out of
school," said Byrs. "In the longer-term, ration cuts can lead to more risky
behaviour such as crime, sexual exploitation and conflict with host
communities.
"We are urging donors to try to find innovative ways to supply badly needed
funding."
<http://www.irinnews.org/Photo/Details/201406250833380904/Women-at-Doro-refu
gee-camp-in-South-Sudan-collect-their-monthly-food-rations>
http://www.irinnews.org/photo/Download.aspx?Source=Report&Year=2014&ImageID=
201406250833380904&Width=490
Photo: <http://www.irinnews.org/photo/> Stephen Graham/IRIN
Women at Doro refugee camp in South Sudan collect their monthly food rations
(image/jpeg attachment: image001.jpg)