U.N. food agency warns of looming aid shortage
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The United Nations food agency warned on Tuesday that it would soon have to reduce rations to refugees in Africa unless donors came up quickly with the $315 million it needed.
The World Food Programme (WFP), which aids some 2.2 million people worldwide, said it had received only $460 million of the $775 million sought in funding for 2005, of which 75 percent is spent in Africa.
“Many of the refugees rely almost entirely on food aid for their survival,” said WFP deputy executive director John Powell.
“They are frequently confined to camps where arable land, if available, is scarce and employment opportunities are limited,” he added in a statement.
WFP began reducing food aid to Sierra Leone this month and assistance has also been cut for refugees in Guinea and Liberia because only 40 percent of the agency’s $93.5 million appeal for West Africa has been met.
The agency added that it still needs to pre-position food for 200,000 Sudanese refugees in Chad and 60,000 Eritreans in Sudan before the onset of the rainy season in July.
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