“This couldn’t come at a worse time,” stated UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres.
Guterres’s comment is in response to the UN World Food Programme’s announcement Monday that it was suspending its food assistance to Syrian refugees as a result of a “funding crisis.”
The suspension of the program means that many of the over 1.7 million Syrian refugees in neighboring countries that had depended on the program’s food vouchers to buy food will now go hungry, the WFP states.
The suspension “will endanger the health and safety of these refugees and will potentially cause further tensions, instability and insecurity in the neighboring host countries,” stated WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin.
Many of the refugees are in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt, and already faced lack of access to necessary hygiene, clothing, shelter, and more.
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