The United Nations (UN) on Friday warned that without immediate international funding, it will not be able to feed 600,000 refugees in Chad in the coming weeks, reported The UN News.
According to the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), Chad is home to the biggest refugee population in West and Central Africa, and the numbers are continuously increasing due to growing unrest in neighboring Sudan.
The WFP said that although refugees are a priority for the organization, it was forced to reduce its plans to support only around 270,000 refugees in April, down from 455,600.
WFP’s Chad country director Pierre Honnorat told reporters in Geneva that the UN food organization has already done a drastic targeting to ensure that the poorest among the poor get the assistance.
However, “we have absolutely no funding from May onwards for the refugees and displaced people. It’s really catastrophic,” Honnorat said.
WFP required the aid of $142.7 million to feed refugees, the 380,000 internally displaced, and other Chadians adversely affected by extreme weather in recent years for the next six months.
The agency said if no further funding is received, then it will be forced to completely stop providing food assistance to refugees as well as internally displaced people of Chad in May.
Chad is currently facing very high severe food insecurity for the fourth consecutive year. last year, the country suffered the worst lean season in a decade as well as the most devastating floods in the last 30 years.
According to the WFP, there were 1.9 million people facing food insecurity in Chad.
Meanwhile, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, is seeking to raise $172.5 million to provide protection and relief assistance to one million forcibly displaced people in Chad.
UNHCR spokesman Matthew Saltmarsh told reporters that the relief plan is just 15 percent funded so far, so more monetary support is needed as soon as possible.
He said the agency has asked Nigeria and Chad to encourage voluntary returns of refugees.
