What U.S. Food Assistance Means to Refugees

USAID provides emergency high-energy biscuits to new arrivals like Robert and his family, who hadn’t eaten in days. Fuller rations, including grains, beans, oil, and salt, are distributed at refugee camps across Uganda. With so many new arrivals, the UN World Food Program is rolling out cutting-edge biometric technology using fingerprints and iris scans to register refugees, to ensure food gets to those who need it most.

USAID works with partners to provide life-saving food assistance to vulnerable populations and reduce hunger and malnutrition so that all people at all times have adequate, safe and nutritious food for healthy and productive lives.

Food Assistance

There are more than 25 million refugees in the world today. More than half are children under 18.

Kenya hosts approximately 470,000 refugees, mainly from Somalia and South Sudan. Most live in the massive Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps—two of the world’s largest—or in the remote Kalobeyei settlement. USAID provides refugees with emergency foods like grains, beans, and oil, and specialized nutrition supplements for malnourished women and children.

Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey together host more than 5 million refugees. Pakistan and Uganda each hosts well over 1 million. Bangladesh and Ethiopia each hosts nearly 1 million refugees.

U.S. food assistance also helps the countries and communities hosting large refugee populations. We provided $690 million in life-saving food to millions of refugees last year, more than anyone in the world.

USAID has delivered life-saving U.S. food assistance around the world since 1954.

Uganda hosts an estimated 1.2 million refugees, more than any other country in Africa.&nbsp;Of these, more than 800,000 fled violence in South Sudan, and almost 350,000 fled violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

There is no "right way" to feed hungry people. USAID provides emergency food assistance in four ways, depending on the crisis' context. Response options include 1) American food, also known as "in-kind" food aid 2) food purchased in the affected country or region, 3) cash transfers for food or 4) food vouchers, which both help people buy food in their local markets.

Types of USAID Emergency Food Assistance

Violence perpetuated by Boko Haram has driven about 2 million Nigerians from their homes, adding to a crisis of refugees and displacement in western Africa’s arid Sahel region. Violence has disrupted farming, markets, and trade, leaving millions in need of emergency food assistance. More than 237,000 Nigerians have fled to neighboring countries and the insurgency has displaced an estimated 1.8 million people within northeast Nigeria.

Most new arrivals settle in makeshift camps and settlements where they are utterly dependent on emergency food and humanitarian assistance. USAID and UN partners provide them with emergency food, including rice and lentils, and specialized nutrition foods to treat acutely malnourished mothers and children, like baby Shobika, in Cox’s Bazar.

After eight years of civil war, 5.6 million Syrian refugees are scattered across the&nbsp;Middle East. In Syria, another 11.7 million people need humanitarian assistance, including 6.2 million displaced from their homes. U.S. food assistance is reaching 3.5 million people in Syria and more than 1 million Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, and Egypt.

*Name changed to protect identity.

Why so many? About half of refugees today come from three countries mired in conflict: South Sudan, Syria, and Afghanistan. Natural disasters, such as persistent drought in Somalia, exacerbate population movements and humanitarian needs.

USAID provides refugees in Ethiopia with emergency food grown by U.S. farmers or in East Africa, including lentils, yellow split peas, sorghum, and wheat. This is life-saving for refugees arriving in camps.

U.S. food assistance has been life-changing for women like Khadija Ahmed Abdi,* who fled war in Somalia. Today she makes and sells handbags and handkerchiefs so her two young boys can attend primary school. If she can’t go back to Somalia, she hopes to open a sewing workshop in Djibouti.

Since 1954 USAID has provided help and hope to refugees around the world through life-saving U.S. food assistance.

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We also provide food-for-training programs to help long-term refugees gain valuable job skills. Today some refugees in Dadaab and Kakuma are working for locals who have started up businesses that provide affordable local milling services near the camps. USAID supports this mini-economy with milling vouchers, which refugees can use at some local 80 millers.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a host—and a source—of hundreds of thousands of refugees. Roughly 5 million Congolese have fled their homes to escape violence, and nearly 850,000 of these have fled to neighboring countries.

Djibouti—a tiny East African country with barely 1 million people—is a haven for more than 29,000 refugees from Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Yemen. Most live in camps in the Ali Sabieh and Obock regions, where they rely entirely on emergency food and other assistance. USAID provides food and also cash-for-food assistance, so refugees can buy food locally and contribute revenue to their host communities.

Refugees have fled their countries to escape violence or persecution. Wherever they are, USAID&nbsp;is there providing emergency food assistance to help them survive, recover, and regain stability.

One woman, whose name is withheld for safety, lost her daughter and her husband, a farmer and businessman, to the violence. Now living in a settlement, she was overjoyed to receive food vouchers to help feed her family. “I danced when I got home,” she said, “telling my children and grandchildren our days of hunger have gone.”

Ethiopia hosts more than 900,000 refugees, most from neighboring Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, and South Sudan, where severe humanitarian crises have forced millions from their homes. Unrelenting violence in South Sudan has driven 422,000 refugees— nearly the population of Miami—to Ethiopia and hundreds of thousands more to surrounding countries. In Somalia, conflict has receded somewhat, but persistent drought and seasonal flooding have exacerbated food needs.

By far, most refugees are hosted by countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

Meantime, conflict in neighboring Central African Republic has forced 173,000 people to go the other way, seeking shelter in the DRC. Samba Ndiaye fled CAR with his wife and seven children, finding safety in DRC’s Inke camp. Today he receives about $11 a month in cash-for-food transfers and has started a football-field-sized garden with fellow refugees on the outskirts of camp, to make ends meet.

Bangladesh became home to the world’s largest refugee settlement in 2017, after 700,000 Rohingya flooded across the border to escape violence in Burma. More than 200,000 Rohingya refugees were already in Bangladesh, having fled previous waves of violence.

Some refugees live in camps; others in local host communities. USAID provides electronic food vouchers so refugees can buy food for themselves locally. That helps people like Mohamad and his family regain some stability and self-reliance - and contribute revenue to the communities hosting them.

Here are some of the world’s largest refugee crises where U.S. food assistance is providing help and hope.