A humanitarian crisis is unfolding in Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp as severe cuts in US foreign aid have left hundreds of thousands of refugees facing starvation. The United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that food rations are now at their lowest levels ever, with children suffering the worst consequences. In the overcrowded Amusait Hospital within the camp, emaciated children fill the 30-bed ward, many too weak to move, including Hellen, a severely malnourished infant with peeling, damaged skin, and James, the ninth-month-old son of Ugandan refugee Agnes Awila, who can only feed her children once a day.
The Kakuma camp, located in north-western Kenya, is home to around 300,000 refugees who have fled conflict in countries such as Uganda, Sudan, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. These refugees depend almost entirely on WFP for food and support. However, WFP was forced to slash rations after President Donald Trump’s administration implemented sweeping cuts to foreign aid as part of its “America First” policy. The United States had previously supplied 70% of the WFP’s funding in Kenya, a lifeline that has now been severely weakened.
WFP’s head of refugee operations in Kenya, Felix Okech, described the situation as one of “slow starvation,” with current food provisions reduced to just 30% of the recommended daily intake. Refugees at the distribution centers now receive a fraction of what they used to. Mothers like Mukuniwa Bililo Mami, who arrived 13 years ago from eastern Congo, collect meager supplies of lentils, rice, and cooking oil, knowing they won’t last the two months they are meant to cover. Mami, a diabetic, also lost access to monthly cash transfers that once helped her buy vegetables suited to her diet and support a small business. That cash assistance about $4 million monthly has been discontinued, collapsing local markets and leaving traders like Badaba Ibrahim unable to offer credit to desperate families.
At the camp’s makeshift shopping center, Ibrahim witnesses the daily agony of hungry families pleading for help. Nearby, single mother Agnes Livio serves her five sons their only meal of the day at 2 PM in a cramped cubicle of iron sheets. She once fed her children porridge in the morning, but that is now a distant memory. As more malnourished children are discharged from the hospital, they return to worsening conditions, where the risk of death from starvation grows by the day.
With current funding far from adequate and little hope of immediate international relief, WFP officials warn that the situation could reach catastrophic levels by August. Despite faint signals of support from one or two alternative donors, the absence of US funding over 70% of total support means the outlook remains bleak for the refugees of Kakuma. Without urgent intervention, tens of thousands of vulnerable people, particularly children, face the deadly grip of hunger and neglect.
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