World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

Asylum seekers arrive at a transit centre in Uganda, fleeing an armed insurgency in the eastern DRC. The transit centre is located in the western Ugandan district of Bundibugyo.

The transit centre is a new one, established to accomodate the new arrivals at a place called Bubukwanga, some 28 kilometres from the DRC border. The total number of asylum seekers there -- all of them supported by WFP -- is over 15,000.

Aid agencies including WFP, as well as the Government of Uganda, are at work here providing food, materials for building shelters, clean water and other support.

WFP was able to deliver food within 48 hours to district where the refugees were arriving. WFP is the primary provider of nutritious food for most refugees and asylum seekers in Uganda.

WFP food is cooked by asylum-seeker volunteers such as this man. WFP provides cooked meals until conditions allow people to cook for themselves, which is usually in the villages where many eventually settle.

A Red Cross worker adds salt to the asyum seekers' supper sauce. WFP provides iodized salt to help to address the micronutrient deficiences that are common among vulnerable groups.

Asylum seekers carry a pan of ready-to-eat cornmeal bread to a serving centre. The Red Cross supervises cooking and serving of the WFP food.

Kids wait to be served the ready meal. Elsewhere in Uganda, WFP is supporting some 162,000 refugees with relief food assistance and nutrition supplements.

Children play with an abandoned cooking pan hours after the food is served and eaten. At least 40 massive pans are required to cook for the more than 15,000 people currently staying at the transit centre.

Refugee operations in Uganda have this year been funded so far by the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, the European Union and the UN's Central Emergency Response Fund.