The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday it has received less than half the money required to feed 27 000 refugees from the Central African Republic in Chad and warned it will stop assisting them at the end of July unless it receives fresh funds urgently.
”We currently have less than 440 tons of food in stock, which represents less than a month of supplies for the refugees. If we do not receive more funding for this operation, the WFP will be forced to stop assisting Chadian refugees who are reliant on food aid,” WFP Chad representative and country director Philippe Guyon le Bouffy said by telephone from the Chadian capital, N’djamena.
More than 40 000 refugees from the Central African Republic flooded into southern Chad after fighting broke out between former president Ange-Felix Patasse and his army chief of staff, General Francois Bozize, in October 2002.
Bozize eventually ousted Patasse with the assistance of several hundred Chadian mercenaries in March last year.
In July 2003, the WFP appealed for $3,4-million to feed the refugees from the Central African Republic in southern Chad. But to date it has received less than half that amount, leaving a shortfall of $1,9 million.
Most of the remaining refugees — about 27 000 — are grouped in two refugee camps at Amboko, near the Chadian border town of Gore, and Yaroungo, near Maro, 250km to the east.
But the WFP said their plight has been overshadowed by the subsequent influx of nearly 200 000 refugees into eastern Chad from Sudan’s troubled Darfur province and they have been largely forgotten by the international community.
”International media and donors are focusing their attention on the emergency operation in the east of Chad; Central Africa appears to be strategically not really interesting,” Guyon le Bouffy said.
However, the WFP’s operation aimed at feeding 180 000 Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad is also seriously underfunded. The organisation said donors have only contributed two-thirds of the $30-million required to feed them until the end of this year.
Lino Bordigne, the United Nations refugee agency’s deputy representative in Chad, said given the prevailing insecurity in the Central African Republic, the refugees in southern Chad are unlikely to go home soon.
”Refugees from Central Africa are reluctant to go back, as there still is trouble along the border,” Bordigne said.
”One of the many problems is that the Central African Republic security forces are said to be searching for supporters of the former Central African president,” he added.
Most of the Chadian fighters who helped Bozize to gain power have been given a cash payment and have been sent home, but they are now idle and have been blamed for growing banditry on both sides of the Chad-Central African Republic frontier and even in northern Cameroon.
Preparing the Central African Republic refugees for a longer stay in southern Chad, UN agencies have moved them to sites where they will have access to cultivable land.
”UNHCR moved the refugees to two sites with important agricultural potential. In collaboration with the WFP, we are trying to provide them with food for an additional year, in the hope they’ll be self-sufficient by then,” Bordigne said.
Médécins sans Frontières (MSF) Belgium, which is in charge of health, water and sanitation in the two refugee camps, said they are in good health, but will continue to rely on food handouts for some time yet.
Stephane Heymens, the head of MSF Belgium in Chad, said: ”Food distribution should continue to these refugees whose situation will remain fragile until the next rainy season allows them to become more self-sufficient.” — Irin