WFP warns of critical food shortages for refugees in Kenya
Food Security
How the score is calculated
The score starts at 8. It adds points from recorded affected, deaths, displaced and casualty counts, plus terms found in the story title, event type or status. For each count, only its highest matching band is used.
- Affected people
- 1–999: +5 · 1,000–9,999: +12 · 10,000–99,999: +20 · 100,000–999,999: +28 · 1 million+: +35
- Deaths
- 1–9: +8 · 10–99: +14 · 100–999: +22 · 1,000+: +30
- Displaced people
- 1–9,999: +6 · 10,000–99,999: +12 · 100,000+: +18
- Casualties
- 100 or more: +8
- Story wording
- +10 for terms such as catastrophe, famine, war, conflict, major earthquake, mass casualty or critical. Otherwise, +5 for active, ongoing, emergency, outbreak, cyclone or hurricane.
Score bands: Watch 0–24 · Moderate 25–49 · High 50–74 · Critical 75–100. Scores are capped at 100. Missing or unparseable figures add no points.
This is a rule-based WorldsAid triage indicator, not an official or independently validated classification. It does not account for recency or local context, and it can understate events with incomplete reporting. Check the linked sources.
Historical record
Status: CLOSED · Imported 2026-10-07
Closed for this historical import at the site owner’s request; not a new assessment of current conditions.
In brief
- What happenedNAIROBI – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today warned more than 435,000 refugees in Kenya faced imminent food shortages unless new funds are swiftly received.
- How many affectedAffected persons: 400,000
- What help is neededWFP needs US$57 million to continue providing food and nutrition assistance to the country’s refugee population between January and June 2021.
What changed
First retained snapshot
No earlier verified snapshot is present in the recovered dataset. This record remains available as the historical baseline.
Situation
NAIROBI – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today warned more than 435,000 refugees in Kenya faced imminent food shortages unless new funds are swiftly received. WFP needs US$57 million to continue providing food and nutrition assistance to the country’s refugee population between January and June 2021. Without new funds, WFP will need to completely halt all cash transfers starting in January and by March, will have fully depleted its food stocks. Most refugee families rely solely on WFP food to survive. “WFP is facing a critical shortage of funds to finance food assistance to refugees living in the Dadaab and Kakuma camps and in Kalobeyei settlement,” said WFP Kenya Country Director Lauren Landis referring to the country’s three main refugee sites. “We have exhausted all resources and are frankly faced with a life-threatening crisis.” The funding shortfall has already forced WFP to cut full food rations by more than one-third as of last September, compromising refugees’ health and nutrition. “We are appealing to our donors to quickly provide new resources to allow us to carry on providing food and cash to the refugees. A disruption of this magnitude to the life-saving refugee operation would be catastrophic,” Landis said. The 40,000 refugees living in northwestern Kalobeyei settlement risk being the first hit; their WFP food is delivered purely in the form of cash transfers. In Dadaab and Kakuma camps, WFP provides almost 400,000 refugees with a mix of cash and food, but cash covers about 60 percent of staple cereals in their food basket. A sharp reduction or complete stop in assistance could have far-reaching consequences on refugees’ health and nutrition— as well as on stability and security in the camps and surrounding communities. It follows other ration cuts over the past two years that have increased child and maternal malnutrition. WFP commends the Government of Kenya for continuing to host refugees and seeking to meet its obligations under the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF), opening up access to local services, providing land and allowing greater integration of refugees with local populations. The CRRF outlines a commitment of the international community to meet the immediate humanitarian needs of the refugees to ease the burden on Kenya. Additional support is needed to support the host government and its goodwill and to not undermine developmental gains. # # # The United Nations World Food Programme is the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. We are the world’s largest humanitarian organization, saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change. Follow us on Twitter @wfp_kenya and @wfp_africa Contact For more information please contact (email address: firstname.lastname@wfp.org): Martin Karimi, WFP/Nairobi, Mob. +254 707 722 161 Amanda Lawrence-Brown, WFP/Nairobi, Mob. +254 707 722 105
Linked charities and agencies
WorldsAid verification
A WorldsAid editor reviewed this record against 1 attributed source, cleaned feed formatting and checked the crisis, place and reporting date. 1 human-impact figure was separated from the narrative and dated where the source allowed. Earlier observations remain in the evidence history instead of being silently overwritten.
Verified figures
- Affected persons
- 400,000 retained at 2020-12-17
What we knew when
- WorldsAid record entered the retained historical dataset.
- Last verification represented by this immutable snapshot.
Earlier figures are never replaced by later values; additional observations are retained as new ledger entries.
Provenance
This page renders the last verified WorldsAid cache directly in HTML. It does not treat generated summaries as primary evidence.
Cached dataset: worldsai_drup771.sql.gz
Verified
SHA-256 18ced822c28050df6da800d406b03baba7e48342f9032ed1431549f1147e5b6b