Refugees in Africa fight over food as US aid cuts take hold

Mint

2 days ago

With the Trump administration gutting American humanitarian aid to Africa, refugees from war-torn countries have been reduced to literally fighting each other over the scraps of food that remain.
At Uganda's sprawling Kiryandongo refugee settlement, residents who had fled South Sudan attacked the mud-and-tarpaulin shelters of new arrivals from Sudan, stealing food, killing one and injuring almost 100, according to doctors and witnesses.
Raiders hit Makkal Abdul Aziz's hut at dinnertime, stealing the porridge and bread she was feeding her six children, the one meal a day they thought they could count on receiving.
During a four-day rampage last month, hundreds of South Sudanese refugees, armed with machetes and sticks, stormed a large, separate compound housing Sudanese newcomers.
'It was so terrifying—I did not think we would survive," Aziz, 35 years old, told The Wall Street Journal.
Makkal Abdul Aziz, a widow, feared for her children's safety when raiders struck and stole food.
Until President Trump took a chain saw to U.S. foreign-assistance programs earlier this year, American funding accounted for 60% of U.N. World Food Program relief efforts in Uganda and, according to United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 40% of the global humanitarian aid budget.
In May, the U.N. food agency ended food distribution to one million refugees in the East African country due to funding shortfalls, largely from U.S. cuts. The U.N. Refugee Agency said last week it expects to run out of emergency funds for Uganda next month. At that point it will be able to provide only $5 a month in blankets, sanitary pads, soap and other essentials to each refugee—about a third of what's required, according to the agency.
'More children will die of malnutrition, more girls will fall victim to sexual violence, and families will be left without shelter or protection unless the world steps up," predicted Dominique Hyde, the agency's spokeswoman.
A State Department spokesman said that in July the U.S. sent food aid worth $30 million to the WFP to distribute to vulnerable people in Uganda but added that America's future humanitarian assistance to Africa would be 'short-term, and targeted," to save lives.
'The United States continues to be the most generous nation in the world, having shouldered more than our share of the global humanitarian burden for too long, and we urge other nations to increase their humanitarian efforts and help share the burden," he said.
The impact of the cuts are rippling across the continent.
Chad, which hosts some 1.2 million Sudanese refugees, is facing a funding gap of nearly $280 million this year, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency. Refugees in the southern African nation of Malawi have been on half-rations since the month after Trump took office earlier this year and began closing down American aid programs.
Uganda welcomes more refugees than any other African country, according to the U.N., with more than 1.9 million scattered across 13 settlements. In camps near the border with Congo, refugees roam neighboring villages to scrounge for food, often clashing with locals who aren't much better off than the refugees, according to local humanitarian officials.
'These refugees do not have much of an option," said Simon Denhere, the U.N. food agency's Malawi country director. 'They cannot go out of the camp to look for work or other livelihoods. It is a scary thought."
The sole hospital in Kiryandongo, which has no operating theater, treated nearly 100 injured people from refugee-on-refugee attacks, according to doctors.
Last month, 50-year-old Abdallah Adam Ishag, who was being treated for depression at a hospital outside the camp, hanged himself, according to Ugandan police. Many other attack victims are stuck at hospitals outside of the settlement that won't discharge them until they pay their medical bills, according to a local volunteer group, Sudan Popular Support Initiative Uganda.
A volunteer worker broke down in tears at a medical center in Kampala, Uganda.A bloodstain from a teacher who was attacked at Kiryandongo refugee camp.
The U.S. government traditionally funneled foreign aid through U.N. agencies and private and religious charities.
'All the charities that used to help these people have disappeared," said Dr. Assad Ibrahim, director of Kampala's Al Salam International Medical Center.
In total, African nations host 46 million forcibly displaced people—more than a third of the world's total—including nine million refugees, defined as those forced to flee to another country, according to the Institute for Security Studies.
Kiryandongo, which sits close to the White Nile River, is a web of ramshackle huts connected with dirt footpaths and now houses more than 100,000 refugees.
Sudan and South Sudan, once united as Sudan, have a long history of enmity. The mostly Christian and animist south fought for decades to break away from the largely Muslim north, finally winning independence in 2011.
Aziz fled Sudan with her children in 2023, after her husband was killed by the Rapid Support Forces, a rebel group that has been fighting a bloody insurgency against the Khartoum government for more than two years.
Uganda normally allocates newly arrived refugees a quarter-acre patch of land for mud-and-wattle houses and small gardens.
In Kiryandongo, refugees—most from South Sudan—have for years used the plots to grow vegetables, supplementing aid supplies. Now food donations have dried up at the same time camp authorities have given their gardens to new arrivals from Sudan—fresh deprivation aggravating longstanding animosity.
'Refugees here are so nervous about sharing limited resources with new arrivals," said Ronald Onen, a South Sudanese leader in the settlement.
Ronald Onen, a South Sudanese community leader, at Kiryandongo refugee camp. His mother, uncle and grandmother are buried there.Ugandan police at the gates of Kiryandongo refugee camp.
Rumors are spreading of another incoming wave of Sudanese refugees, according to Onen, a father of six, who was told in April that he no longer qualifies for U.N. food rations.
In July, after stealing the Aziz family's dinner, the raiders tore down her shelter, as well as dozens of others built on plots previously allocated to South Sudanese refugees.
Aziz moved to get her children—ranging from one to 17 years old—to safety. Pandemonium from nearby huts drowned out her children's cries, she said.
A neighbor warned her South Sudanese youths scrounging for food were sacking the area housing Sudanese refugees.
Invaders beat Kabashi Idris Kafi to death with sticks as the 65-year-old Sudanese camp leader fought to protect a community kitchen, according to neighbors and charity workers.
Aziz eventually found shelter in a tent being used as a makeshift camp mosque. The family has to vacate the tent five times a day to allow worshipers to hold prayers.
The clashes lasted four days, and Ugandan troops are enforcing a dawn-to-dusk curfew to keep the two refugee populations apart.
Write to Nicholas Bariyo at [e-mail] and Alexandra Wexler at [e-mail]