Refugee aid would shrink under Senate plan

WASHINGTON – U.S. funding for refugees could be cut by hundreds of millions of dollars next year under the Senate’s proposed spending plan even as a global humanitarian crisis, spurred by the exodus of millions of people from their homes in Afghanistan, Iraq and especially Syria, grows steadily worse.

The Senate’s fiscal 2016 foreign aid bill would reduce by 14 percent, or $415 million, the Migration and Refugee Assistance account, which is currently funded at just under $3.06 billion.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in late August reported it has only 41 percent of what it needs to meet the needs of registered Syrian refugees for the rest of the year, a funding gap of nearly $800 million. And the World Food Program announced last week that due to lack of funds it had to remove one-third of Syrian refugees living in the region, including 229,000 people in Jordan, from its already scaled-back food voucher program, according to the Associated Press.

Nearly 60 million people were displaced globally in 2014 – the highest number recorded, according to a June report from UNHCR. That means roughly one in every 122 people is either internally displaced inside his or her own country, a refugee or seeking asylum. Only 37.5 million people were displaced a decade ago.

The possible cut to the Migration and Refugee Assistance account, which provides necessities to refugees and other displaced people, is a result of the mandatory spending caps ordered by the Budget Control Act.

Tribune News Service