Food in Refugee Camps

Malnutrition has become a serious concern within refugee camps. Officials are quickly discovering that an alarming amount of people within refugee camps are malnourished.

"According to UNHCR and World Food Programme (WFP) experts, 20 percent or more of the refugees are suffering from acute malnutrition in, refugee camps in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Chad. Lack of Vitamin B is a public health problem among refugees in countries like Nepal and Bangladesh. Meanwhile, more than 60 percent of the women and children in camps in Kenya and Algeria, who are highly dependent on food aid, are anaemic." (UNHCR)

This quote, taken form a UNHRC article shows just how wide spread the problem of malnutrition is in refugee camps. While some shortage of food is expected the fact that roughly twenty percent of refugees, within camps, are suffering from malnutrition was surprising to me. Especially when you think that a country decided to host these refugees. However, I think that this problem would be incredibly difficult to deal with as the number of refugees can continue to increase. Also, to relate back to a previous post, the host country must continue to provide for their own citizens 

However, to get back to the issue of malnutrition, I was surprised to find how high the percentage of people that were affected by this issue. One thing that I found interesting was that the amount of food aid given to refugee camps has dropped drastically in the last ten years. "Fifteen million tons of food aid were provided in 1999 and only 7.4 million in 2004... as you can see, food aid is falling." (UNHCR) This quote shows how the amount of food aid that organizations attempting help refugees has fallen drastically in the last few years. This is surprising to me because it means that anything from governments, to non-profit organizations have cut back on their support of refugee camps. The world needs to realize that refugee camps are not going anywhere fast, and something like malnutrition is a problem that could be quickly fixed, but so far less is being done, rather than more. 

"UNHCR - UN agencies highlight dangers of increasing malnutrition in refugee camps." UNHCR Welcome. 06 May 2009 .