As food shortages worsen due to aid cuts, the United Nations informed AFP Thursday that over 6,000 South Sudanese refugees have fled one of Kenya’s largest refugee camps.
About 300,000 refugees from South Sudan, Somalia, Uganda, and Burundi are housed in the second-largest refugee camp in east Africa, Kakuma, in northern Kenya.
Humanitarian groups are struggling, with violent protests breaking out last month due to reduced rations following massive cuts to aid from the United States and other donors.
Desperately poor South Sudan has struggled with years of instability and is currently on the verge of renewed civil war, driving refugees over the border.
“Since January, about 6,200 South Sudanese refugees have departed Kakuma and Kalobeyei,” another settlement adjoining it, the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) said in a statement emailed to AFP.
Between July and August 22 alone roughly 3,600 people mainly women and children left the sprawling camp, it said, “accounting for over half of all exits this year”.
“Actual numbers are likely higher, as many movements happen through informal crossings,” it said.
It added that the departures came in the context of “some 4,800 new arrivals” since January, however.
*
Email *
Website
