I’ve just returned from a few days up-country carrying out some interviews for my PhD. The interviews were with women who are residing in one of official refugee settlements run by UNHCR in collaboration with the Government of Uganda. The women have all fled from South Sudan at some point in the relatively recent past, and have their own personal experiences of conflict-caused trauma. I did three interviews on each of two consecutive days, and one thing of note that occurred between the first three interviews and the second three interviews was an announcement made by the Settlement officials on behalf of the World Food Programme.
Disclaimer: What follows are my personal reflections, and not the official reflections of any organisation named.
The announcement made was that the World Food Programme (WFP) is to be ending its food distribution programme to refugees in June 2023, ie in less than 4 months. Not only are they ending food distribution, but they have also announced that they are not going to replace food provision with cash payments, as had apparently been suggested in a previous announcement. NB, apparently new arrivals at a camp will still get food provision, as will those registered as elderly or disabled.
For the refugees, this announcement is huge, and the mental health implications are massive. The refugees rely on WFP food parcels to keep them going. Whilst there are occasional small shops / streetside vendors around where they can buy other food stuffs, these are limited in number and food items. Access to employment opportunities are also hard to come by and so earning money is not easy and people live on a day-to-day basis. Certainly, there aren’t enough employment opportunities for the number of refugees that exist, either in the settlement or in the nearby townships. The land that the settlement is on is really rocky, as the photos below show, and most of it is not suitable for farming and growing food stuff, even if the refugees did have land rights to be able to farm it. But, they don’t have the land rights, and so yet again they are scuppered.
The WFP says that the reason for stopping the food distribution programme, which is a global policy, and not limited to just a few refugee settlements is that it is moving towards a model of functioning that focuses more on sustainability, whereby it promotes sustainable livelihoods programmes, and skills training. This all makes sense, but the reality for the refugees in the camp I was visiting is that the programmes aren’t set up yet, and as far as food production goes - even if refugees started planting tomorrow, the rains aren’t really coming until April, so no food will be available to be harvested by June.
In the course of one announcement, the future suddenly started to look very bleak for those living in the settlement. Having fled from the war in South Sudan, some to get away from the fighting, some to get away from the lack of food, there is an expectation that some refugees will now consider whether to return home and hope that they can make things work there, rather than struggling in a refugee settlement in a foreign land. Maybe that’s another part of what the aim is; to weed out those who have fled just to get food rather than those who have fled as their lives really were in danger.
The expectation is that mental ill-health issues will increase and the need for psychosocial support will grow. Suicide rates have been coming down at an encouraging rate in the areas of the camp where this psycho-social support has been available, but what might happen now that people are fearful of how to cope when the food provision stops? Organisations exist that provide psychosocial support and trauma counselling, but how do you counsel someone who is starving? How do you encourage them to have hope for the future, when they can’t see where their next meal is coming from?
The announcement by the OPM lasted only 30 minutes or so, but the impact of it will last so very much longer.
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