Since food rations were slashed at his refugee camp in Kenya three months ago Abass Ahmed has struggled to settle his hungry children and quiet their rumbling stomachs. Life has never been so tough, he said, as severe US aid cuts bite.
“I have lived in Dadaab for 30 years and this is the first time we have received no food assistance,” said the 34-year-old Somali refugee. “It's the worst we have experienced.”
His five-year-old son and daughter, who is seven, frequently complain of nagging stomachs, but he has little to offer them.
The family stopped eating breakfast, surviving on just two thin meals a day.
“I try to distract them with play or by giving them milk, if we have some, but it's not easy,” Ahmed, who is a teacher, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Dadaab camp in northeastern Kenya.
From Kenya to Bangladesh, refugees around the world have seen their food rations slashed because of a collapse in aid funding from the US and other Western countries.
Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has dismantled the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to pursue his “America first” agenda. Other donors such as Britain, Germany and Canada have also cut their aid budgets.
As a result, the UN World Food Programme (WFP), the largest provider of global food aid, has been forced to reduce, or stop, food assistance to millions of people fleeing war, disaster and persecution.
Mercy Juma, head of communications for the WFP in Kenya, said food assistance to refugees had been shrinking since 2018 due to funding shortfalls, with the most severe reductions implemented at the end of 2024 partly due to a lack of US commitments.
“The US was our biggest donor, providing about 70% of our budget, so the withdrawal of funding from the US has had a serious affect on refugees in Kenya,” said Juma.
“People are already opting to eat one meal a day, mothers are eating less to feed their children, people are selling their belongings. When you reduce food, it will lead to a slow starvation.”
RATIONS SLASHED
According to the UN, nearly 37-million people worldwide are refugees — with 69% from just five countries: Syria, Venezuela, Ukraine, Afghanistan and South Sudan.
Many refugees live in poverty in camps in countries that include Iran, Turkey, Uganda, Pakistan and Kenya.
Often banned from working, they live in decrepit housing and usually lack the most basic services.
Kenya hosts nearly 860,000 refugees and asylum seekers, most of whom fled neighbouring Somalia after it descended into civil war in 1991.
Over the years more refugees — from countries including South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia — have streamed in, largely uprooted by drought and conflict. In Dadaab — a sprawling settlement spread across semi-arid desert that is home to more than 430,000 people — refugees have few ways to earn a living as the Kenyan government forbids them from leaving the camp to work.
Some rear goats or take on informal manual labour. Others run small kiosks sewing clothes, selling camel meat and basic groceries, or charging cellphones from solar panels.
Others, such as Ahmed, have jobs with foreign aid agencies as teachers, translators or health workers, earning about $100 (R1,738) a month — a big help but not enough to sustain a family.
They live in tarpaulin tents or shacks made of corrugated iron and branches and for decades have relied on food rations provided by the WFP and paid for by foreign donors.
Before the cuts the WFP provided 8.1kg of rice, 1.5kg of lentils and 1.1l of vegetable oil per person each month to refugees in Dadaab and two other refugee camps, Kakuma and Kalobeyei, in northwestern Turkana county.
Since June the WFP has cut these rations by 60% for vulnerable groups — the pregnant, elderly and disabled — while refugees who earn any income, such as Ahmed, get no food aid at all.
Juma said the WFP was now only able to provide food to 480,000 of the 700,000 refugees it used to support in Kenya.
“We are worried about the long-term effects of reduced rations,” said Juma, adding children were being taken out of school to work and there was a higher risk of malnutrition among children.
BUSINESSES CLOSE, VIOLENT CLASHES
As well as slashing food, the WFP has also stopped its monthly cash allowance of $5 (R86.80) a person, which refugees used to buy fresh vegetables and milk to supplement their meagre rations.
Scores of small businesses in Dadaab have shut because of the resulting loss of business.
Shopkeeper Abass Issak, 45, said he was forced to close his small grocery shop in July after 10 years of business, earning about $400 (R6,954) a month.
“I went bankrupt. Customers had no money and bought food on credit, but they couldn't pay me back. I was owed hundreds of dollars,” Issak said by phone from Dadaab.
“Many shops like mine are collapsing,” added Issak, who supports 28 people, including two wives, children, parents and siblings.
The cuts have also led to sometimes violent protests.
In July, at least one refugee was killed after clashes with the police at a WFP distribution centre in Kalobeyei. Government officials said an empty WFP store was torched by refugees who were angered by their slashed rations.
The WFP is appealing for $220m (R3.82bn) to provide food to refugees for the next six months, but donors have only pledged $52m (R904m) so far, said Juma.
Talks with big donors continue — but Ahmed fears refugees like him are already forgotten.
“We feel depressed and have so much anxiety,” he said. “If the international community cannot help us people will end up dying.”
The Thomson Reuters Foundation is the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters.
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