Kenya: starvation sets in at refugee camps after USAID cuts

Funding cuts to food rations in Kenya have pushed hundreds of thousands of people to the edge of starvation, according to the BBC on June 12th. 

US President Donald Trump implemented his ‘America First’ policy early in his second term, which included putting most of the staff of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) on leave from February 7th this year and drastically cutting funding.

Thousands of refugees in Kenya rely on the UN’s World Food Programme for rations, and previously the US was funding roughly 70% of the WFP’s operations in Kenya. The WFP has therefore had to cut rations down to only 30% of the minimum recommended amount a person needs to eat to be healthy.

The head of the WFP’s refugee operations in Kenya stated that “If we have a protracted situation where this is what we can manage, then basically we have a slowly starving population.”

The amount of rations being distributed in refugee camps is not the only program that’s been affected by the US funding cuts.

Another function of the UN that was affected is cash transfers. They would give cash directly to refugees in Kenya’s camps to allow them to buy supplies, mainly food.

The UN was giving around £3 million to refugees in Kenya each month, which helped them buy food for their whole families.

The cash transfers were not just a quick fix- the BBC spoke to a recipient who was able to use the money to start a vegetable garden and rear chickens and ducks, which she sold to other refugees at a market. 

These markets now face collapse, and refugees who used to eat three meals a day are now being asked to stretch rations that could barely last a month over two.

The consequences of funding cuts are clearly visible inside these refugee camps. The Kakuma camp houses roughly 300,000 refugees who have fled from conflict stricken nations such as Sudan, and the ward at Kakuma Amusait Hospital is full of children suffering severe acute malnutrition, according to the BBC.

A UN official told the BBC that in these camps people are “slowly starving.” Unless the WFP finds more funding, starvation will set in as soon as August.

Kenya is only the latest African nation to suffer from President Trump’s cuts to USAID. Maghrebi reported on March 11th that the cuts stopped food from reaching 1.8 millions people in Sudan who were already affected by famine. The food was there, but cuts meant there was no way to distribute it.

Humanitarian aid for the Democratic Republic of the Congo was also affected, and the state budget in Ghana where US aid contributed to health and agricultural sectors.

BBC/Maghrebi