Minister Hillary Onek, overseeing Relief, Disaster Preparedness, and Refugee affairs, urges the international community to bolster funding for Uganda’s refugee support initiatives, citing a pressing need to provide sustenance for the expanding refugee population.
His appeal comes in the wake of Japan’s donation of 2000 metric tons of rice valued at 8.5 billion Ugandan Shillings, intended to alleviate the food shortage among refugees.
Onek underscores the current plight of refugees, who are subsisting on just one meal per day, with some resorting to resorting to survival tactics such as pilfering from local gardens.
He emphasizes that the refugee situation transcends Uganda’s borders, urging global solidarity to address the pressing need for sustenance.
Commending Japan for its consistent support, Onek acknowledges the nation’s efforts in enhancing funding to assist Uganda in accommodating the growing refugee numbers.
Japanese Ambassador Fukazawa Hidemoto highlights the exacerbating effect of global conflicts on food prices, particularly citing Russian aggression against Ukraine. He pledges ongoing Japanese support to mitigate food and nutrition insecurity in refugee settlements through both short and long-term approaches.
Marcus Prior, Deputy Country Director of the World Food Program (WFP) in Uganda, underscores the significance of Japan’s contribution in aiding 50,000 newly arrived refugees from South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Somalia, and Sudan.
He elaborates on WFP’s prioritization strategy, focusing on the most vulnerable refugees for food assistance, with varying ration sizes based on vulnerability levels. New arrivals receive full food rations for the initial three months, with subsequent adjustments based on vulnerability assessments.
Despite WFP’s substantial efforts, including procuring maize and beans and allocating millions of dollars monthly, the current support remains insufficient to meet the needs of Uganda’s over 1.6 million refugees.
