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Food Agency Urges More Funds to Feed Refugees - UN Finance - Global Policy Forum Food Agency Urges More Funds
to Feed RefugeesAgence France Presse
March 12, 2001The UN food aid agency on Monday appealed to potential donors to fully fund its 27-million-dollar emergency operations in Uganda so it can maintain food distribution to nearly 700,000 internally displaced people and refugees over the next months. The United Nations World Food Programme said it urgently needed the money to buy 45,000 tonnes of food to continue its operations which were launched in April last year and remain almost 60 percent under funded.
WFP had originally planned to feed 411,500 people but intensified rebel activities in Uganda last year sent tens of thousands more fleeing from their homes in search of food and shelter. Coupled with an increasing influx of refugees from Sudan, the number of people receiving WFP food in Uganda has skyrocketed to some 673,000 in Northern and Western Uganda.
"The number of refugees and internally displaced people who need our help has increased drastically," said Burk Oberle, the WFP's Great Lakes regional manager. "And if more refugees arrive in the coming months, our already under funded operation will be further strained."
Prolonged insecurity within the borders of Uganda, which is holding presidential elections on March 12, and civil strife in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan, have led to an increasing number of people being cut off from their homes and a means of survival. The WFP is the United Nations' front-line agency in the fight against hunger. In 1999, it fed more than 89 million people in 82 countries.
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