WFP Forced To Choose Ukraine Over Long Term War Refugees To Support With Aid
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Roshan Amiri
- . August 18, 2022
- . Update: August 24, 2022 12:46 am
Ukraine-In a sad state of affairs, the World Food Programme is choosing to ‘feed the starving over the ones who are hungry’ as it tries to compensate for the Ukraine crises which seems to be taking precedence over the Syrian one.
Funded by the United Nations, the programme is going to be taking away the stipend food supply from Syrian refugees to compensate for a need that has arisen in Ukraine, it has confirmed in a formal statement. In a formal response to media queries, the WFP said that there are two reasons for its decision- one that there are conflicting demands coming from different parts of the world, and second that surging global food and fuel prices are making things difficult for them to manage flowing aid to both parties.
WFP has been funding and looking after Syrian refugees since 2011. It has been far too long for a country that does not seem to be wishing to stand back on its own two feet. The effective cut, the UN aided programme says would affect “353,000 vulnerable refugees” in Jordan living outside two refugee camps. They are mostly Syrian but also include some Iraqis, Yemenis and Sudanese.
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So, technically, it is not just Syrians but a whole lot of victims to social unrest and civil war that has rocked most countries that are rich in fossil fuels and rocked by militia clashes with government and Western intervention, making it tough for the wars to be brought to an end. The camps near the Syrian border, Zaatari and Azraq, house 17 per cent of the 667,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan. The rest of the Syrian refugees in the kingdom live mostly in urban centres in the middle of Jordan and in the north.
In Jordan, about 500,000 Syrian refugees are on the WFP stipends. Those outside the camps receiving $32 a month in food stipends will experience a drop to $21. Other refugees, deemed not as needy, will receive $14 a month, compared with $21 before the cut. Diplomats say the humanitarian focus on Ukraine could further undermine the overall aid to Syrian refugees.
