Germany responds to food needs of Sahrawi refugee families in Algeria

For more than 40 years, Sahrawi refugees have been living under extremely harsh conditions in the Sahara desert in southwestern Algeria. Hosted in five refugee camps near Tindouf, refugee families rely on WFP as their primary source of food as employment opportunities are limited.

“The basic needs of the Sahrawi refugees must not be forgotten,” said Michael Zenner, Ambassador of Germany to Algeria. “This is why the German government attaches great importance to the €1 million contribution allocated to the WFP project that helps to guarantee the refugees’ food security.”

WFP distributes 125,000 food rations that include rice, barley, wheat flour, pulses, vegetable oil, sugar and a specialized nutrition product - a corn soya blend that includes essential vitamins and minerals to improve refugees’ nutrition. These monthly rations are key to cover the basic food needs of vulnerable Sahrawi refugee women, men, boys and girls.

“Germany is a vital partner to WFP and is one of the top donors to our life-saving operations around the world,” said Romain Sirois, WFP Representative in Algeria. “WFP is very grateful for Germany’s second contribution to support Sahrawi refugees over the past two years, which have helped WFP maintain its lifeline of food assistance in the camps.”

WFP has been supporting refugees from Western Sahara in Algeria since 1986. All WFP assistance in Algeria is carried out and monitored in collaboration with national and international organizations to ensure the assistance reaches the people for whom it is intended.

Follow us on Twitter @wfp_media and @wfp_mena

For more information please contact (email address: firstname.lastname@wfp.org):

Katharina Meyer-Seipp, WFP/Algiers, Tel. +213 21 60 80 66, Mob. +213 660811416

Abeer Etefa, WFP/Cairo, Tel. +2010 66634352

Dina El-Kassaby, WFP/Cairo, Tel. +2010 15218882