Food Aid Was Just Cut To Refugees In Jordan. The Impact Could Be Deadly.

Around 200,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan received a text message from the World Food Program this week informing them that their food aid would be cut. The $14 refugees receive monthly from WFP is crucial for their survival.

Without this aid, refugees are now even more vulnerable than before.

“What shall I do? Sell myself or sell my three girls?” said Om Rabab, a refugee using a pseudonym, told Buzzfeed.

Such desperation opens up refugees to sexual and economic exploitation should they want to avoid staying in a refugee camp. Refugees often speak poorly of camps as desolate and restrictive places. Their only other options are returning to war-torn Syria or making the dangerous journey to Europe — a journey that has cost many lives.

There are currently around 4 million refugees from Syria in neighboring countries. Turkey has the most with over 1.6 million while diminutive Lebanon has 1.1 million. Jordan has over 600,000 refugees — many are in camps like the world’s largest refugee camp Zaatari — though many are also based in urban centers so they can find work.

As the 4-year-old Syrian war has progressed, some of the aid money previously devoted to helping refugees has been relocated to help other humanitarian crises. With less aid, refugees are looking for an escape so they can raise their children to have normal lives. While well aware that death at sea is a possibility, they board ships because it has better prospects than the land they currently occupy.

So far this year around 2,500 refugees have drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea. People who work for aid agencies believe that figure will get higher this winter too, as rougher waters and more desperate refugees coincide.

“The longer the crisis drags on,” Julie Marshall, a spokesperson at WFP, told the Huffington Post, “the more desperate refugees become.”

Original Article
Source: thinkprogress.org/
Author: Justin Salhani