Cash-strapped WFP: Crisis Around the Corner?

World Food Program (WFP) Uganda is in dire need of additional funding. In order to maintain the food pipeline in Uganda for refugees, IDPs, schools and hospitals, the agency needs $131 millions for 2007. As of today, it has only received around $44 millions. This means that effectively the programme will seize to distribute food by the end of June.

The lack of funding seems to follow a general pattern in which donors prefer to allocate resources to IDPs rather than to refugees - and to focus on other areas than Uganda.

The shortage is bound to hit all groups of beneficiaries - including Ugandan schools linked to the "Food for Education" program. Evidently, this will be difficult to explain to the refugee community; SHRA monitors have already recorded voices in the Sudanese dominated settlements in Northern Uganda claiming that it is in fact a deliberate policy by the Government, UNHCR and WFP aimed at speeding up the voluntary repatriation process by removing the food support. SHRA follows the situation closely.
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Photo: Soon a thing of the past? WFP food piles up in Nakivale Settlement, Western Uganda.