Guardian News & Media /Geneva
A funding crisis has forced the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) to suspend food vouchers to more than 1.7mn Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt, leaving hundreds of thousands of displaced families facing a “disastrous” winter and increasing the risk of further instability in the region.
Since the conflict began three years ago, the WFP has been bringing food to millions of people inside the country and hundreds of thousands more in neighbouring states.
It has used the voucher scheme, which allows Syrian refugees to buy food in local shops, to inject about $800mn into the economies of those countries in the region hosting Syrians forced from their homes by the violence.
But after finding itself unable to secure the $64mn it needs to support Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries in December, the WFP announced yesterday that it was suspending the voucher scheme.
Its executive director, Ertharin Cousin, issued a blunt and urgent appeal to donors, warning the suspension would have a devastating effect on the lives of more than one and a half million people.
“[It] will endanger the health and safety of these refugees and will potentially cause further tensions, instability and insecurity in the neighbouring host countries,” said Cousin. “The suspension of WFP food assistance will be disastrous for many already suffering families.”
She added that Syrian refugees in camps and informal settlements throughout the region were ill-prepared for another difficult winter - especially in Lebanon and Jordan, where tents are drenched in mud, hygiene conditions are poor and many children lack shoes and warm clothes.
Muhannad Hadi, WFP regional emergency co-ordinator for the Syria Crisis, said the consequences for both Syrian refugees and host nations could be dramatic.
“We are very concerned about the negative impact these cuts will have on the refugees as well as the countries which host them,” he said. “These countries have shouldered a heavy burden throughout this crisis.”
The WFP and others are having to contend with five simultaneous level-3 emergencies, the UN’s most serious crisis designation, in Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Central African Republic and those West African countries caught up in the Ebola outbreak.
Last month, another funding shortfall compelled the WFP to halve rations to half a million refugees, mainly from Somalia and South Sudan, who are living in the Dadaab and Kakuma camps in remote areas in northern Kenya.
Gregory Barrow, director of the WFP’s London office, said: “Because many donations are allocated to specific programmes and cannot be used elsewhere, there is a lack of flexibility in the system. This has been exacerbated by the high number of complex emergencies we are facing and some programmes such as those for refugees are under-funded.”
Barrow said the precise effects of the suspension would be hard to gauge as refugees’ circumstances differed from country to country.
As many of the refugees were living outside camps, he said, there would be opportunities for them to look for informal work that would enable them to earn money for food. Others, in big camps such as Zaatari and Azraq in Jordan, are still receiving rations.
He added: “Often members of local communities and, in some cases, local authorities provide some assistance - but WFP is by far and away the biggest provider of food assistance and there are no other organisations that have the scale and reach to cover the food needs of the more than 1.7mn who have been affected by this suspension.”
Internally displaced Syrians sit outside tents at the Jarjanaz refugee camp in the southern countryside of Idlib on Sunday.
