World Food Programme: Our Food Stocks Enough Until April

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The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned today that life-saving humanitarian aid for Sudanese refugees in Chad will stop within weeks without urgent funding.

In a statement today, the program said it faces a catastrophic funding crisis in Chad that has already surpassed all areas, as Sudanese refugee influxes continue to the country, which hosts around one million refugees so far, and the rainy season approaches, threatening to cut off the delivery of humanitarian aid to camps in the east of the country.

The program explained that it will have to suspend its aid to 1.2 million Sudanese refugees and affected individuals in April due to funding shortages. It called for urgent provision of 242 million to continue its operations for the next six months.

The Chadian government declared a "food emergency" across its territories mid-last month. Chad has been facing a food crisis for the fifth consecutive year, with severe hunger expected to affect 2.9 million people during the lean season from June to August.

Pierre Honnorat, WFP Representative and Country Director in Chad, said, "We are in a race against time. The small window for pre-positioning supplies is closing rapidly, and our funding is drying up at this critical stage. We have already cut back our operations in ways that were unthinkable just a few years ago, leaving the hungry on the brink of famine."

He added, "We need donors to prevent the situation from becoming a widespread catastrophe."

Since the outbreak of conflict in Sudan last year, irregular funding for the World Food Programme has allowed it to focus only on immediate needs, with efforts concentrated on newly arrived Sudanese refugees. However, in April, the organization will be forced to cut off all assistance provided to newly arrived Sudanese refugees. For several months, the majority of refugees from Cameroon, the Central African Republic, and Nigeria have received no assistance at all due to limited funding. Cutting food rations exacerbates competition among refugees, returnees, and already strained host communities for scarce resources, sowing the seeds of conflict and instability.

Refugees rely entirely on humanitarian aid to survive.

Honnorat warned, "We are forcing families to skip meals and consume fewer nutritious foods, paving the way for nutrition crises, instability, and displacement crises."