UN refugee agency warns funding cuts threaten aid for 11 million people

More than 11 million people face losing crucial emergency aid this year due to major funding cuts by donor nations, in particular the United States.

That is according to the United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, which says this represents about one-third of the people it normally supports.

Last year, the agency supported 36 million people across 135 countries. That number is now expected to drop sharply.

Among the hardest hit are regions like the Chad-Sudan border. Some 12 million Sudanese have fled into eastern Chad during the three-year civil war.

At refugee sites like Iridimi Camp, displaced Sudanese say life is very difficult without shelter, a bed to sleep on, and staying in the hot sun.

UNHCR regional manager, Jean-Paul Habamungu Samvura, says he has never seen anything like this before.

“Bringing people from the border crossing and leaving them open air. Thousands of people. I never seen this in my almost 27 years of career and humanitarian assistance, either in Africa or in Asia,” he says.

There are about 80,000 refugees in the camp, but aid organisations have little to distribute to them.

With only one permanent doctor at its hospital, both illnesses and people are lining up, but medical supplies are almost non-existent.

They only get six litres of clean water per day, so in desperation, children are drinking dirty water from puddles and riverbeds. The same places are used as toilets, due to a severe lack of latrines.

The UNHCR says with just 23 per cent of its funding requirements for this year filled, it has been forced to cut programmes, with women and children, as ever, the hardest hit.