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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

229,000 refugees lose U.N. food aid

Associated Press

AMMAN, Jordan – The cash-strapped World Food Program has had to drop one-third of Syrian refugees from its food voucher program in Middle Eastern host countries this year, including 229,000 in Jordan who stopped receiving food aid this month, a spokeswoman said Friday.

The sharp cutbacks come at a time when growing numbers of desperate Syrians who initially found refuge in neighboring countries are trying to reach Europe. Since 2011, more than 4 million Syrians have fled their country’s civil war, most settling in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt.

Abeer Etefa, a WFP regional spokeswoman, said the world must do more to support refugees in the regional host countries or face increasing migration.

“This is a crisis that has been brewing in the region for five years,” she said. “Now it is getting the attention of the world because it moved one step further from the region to Europe. We have to help people where they are or they will move.”

The U.N. agency has been distributing food vouchers to refugees since the beginning of the Syria crisis, but is facing increasing funding gaps. “Since the beginning of this operation, it has been hand to mouth,” Etefa said.

She said the agency needs $236 million to keep the program – even in its scaled-back version – funded through November. No major donors have come forward.

Since the beginning of the year, the agency has reduced the number of voucher recipients in the regional host countries from 2.1 million to about 1.4 million and sharply reduced the value of the vouchers. The maximum is now $14 per person per month for urban refugees in Lebanon and Jordan.

Jordan hosts about 630,000 Syrian refugees, including more than half a million in communities and the rest in camps. As of September, 229,000 of 440,000 urban refugees who had been receiving some food aid lost their benefits, Etefa said.